As far as I'm concerned pre-compiled binaries should only be offered as potential default in scripting language ecosystems - there is an expectation that things

As far as I'm concerned pre-compiled binaries should only be offered as potential default in scripting language ecosystems - there is an expectation that things should "just work". I don't mind it for when I work in Node - honestly I prefer it. But in Rust? The entire toolchain is designed to compile from source. It may be a bit slow for certain crates still, but that's much weaker justification to make pre-compiled the default. Crates should compile from source by default as long as source actually exists (ex. has not been lost somehow, or wide distribution of the crate is unlikely). I don't buy any of the malicious theories since the author is well appreciated and respected. It's likely just a misguided choice in this case. People have rightly mentioned build.rs flexibility - I think there is nuance here and maybe it's good to discuss what default behavior should be expected by users, since sometimes build.rs does wild and useful things.