Right, but I don't think that's the issue. If the complaint is that other systems are less up-to-date than brew is, then the number of things installed is stil

Right, but I don't think that's the issue. If the complaint is that other systems are less up-to-date than brew is, then the number of things installed is still the issue - whether they're dependencies or not. Unless, of course, the other system manages dependencies differently, say it compiles in static versions of required libraries at build-time, or divides them up into fewer dependent packages.