> The important thing for me with this is that it doesnt appear to impact homebrew's ability to download, compile, and install open source software. And that is the main thing I use homebrew for. I believe that is true for most people too

FWIW I don't think brew has been compiling on installation even open source things by default for a while now[1]:

> Homebrew provides pre-built binary packages for many formulae. These are referred to as bottles and are available at https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/packages.

The link shows close to 300 pages of precompiled packages available, and that section ends with the sentence "We aim to bottle everything".

I don't think this necessarily changes anything you've stated with regards to the flag being removed as described in the Github issue linked by OP, but I think it's still worth noting because this is markedly different than how homebrew distributed things in the past, so others might not be aware of this change either.

[1]: I assume the heading title for this docs section predates this change, but the docs section I'm referencing is https://docs.brew.sh/FAQ#why-do-you-compile-everything

> FWIW I don't think brew has been compiling on installation even open source things by default for a while now

For built in formulas, no. For custom ones very much more so. I know I have a bunch I’ll never have bottles for and would thus always be compiled if used.

You can tell this in how fast things "pour". There's no way things are compiling from source that fast.