[sourcefrog]

Yes, that's correct: reusing developer's computers means you're trusting all of them. At small scale, that may be acceptable because you probably trust them all a lot anyhow, and perhaps are unlikely to have a strictly hermetic and isolated build system.

When the team is bigger or when security is more important, it's important to have a build system where you're confident that no one can subvert the output, and that includes ensuring that very few people can control machines running distccd.

Another way in which it shows its age is that, by default, there are only netblock based restrictions on clients, and connections are over unencrypted TCP by default (last time I looked), although there is an option to use SSH (or I guess Tailscale or similar.)