zlacker

Binary distribution is not bad, it's heaps better than forcing everyone to recompile the very same software again and again on their own laptops. See also Nix.

>>wereHa+(OP)
MacPorts does not force you to do that. Homebrew on the other hand pushes you strongly towards their precompiled binaries, and they have steadily removed customizability of what gets installed on your machine as a result because they don't want to shoulder the added complexity on their side (as they'd need to provide binaries for all the options…)