Not sure if this is the kind of not-embedding-fonts you're referring to, but in layout and design software you often see PDF saving options to either rasterize

Not sure if this is the kind of not-embedding-fonts you're referring to, but in layout and design software you often see PDF saving options to either rasterize fonts or embed the fonts as vector curves. I believe both Gimp and Inkscape have been able to do this for a while, for example.