[mort96]

/opt/homebrew isn't a folder provided by the operating the system, but it's still a "system folder" as in not a user folder. That's messed up. I have to imagine that this causes no end of issues on multi-user machines. The homebrew folder should either be somewhere under ~, or owned by root or some other system account.

[mikemcquaid]

Most macOS developer machines (our primary/biggest target audience) are not multi-user machines. It's not owned by root because Homebrew doesn't run as root (because the macOS sandbox doesn't run as root).

Nothing stopping you from having this owned by a system account, it's just not a path we recommend because it's not the best fit for most of our users.

[mid-kid]

Most compiled software gets its installation prefix hardcoded at build time. If you move the directory elsewhere, then everything needs to be recompiled.

[duped]

I remember having one user account for my personal stuff and another user account for work on a personal machine (startup life) and needing to chown brew's install folders whenever I switched users. Extremely annoying.