I think its more that the language enforces some formatting to a degree. Other languages are very free form in how you can structure your style and where to place your curly brace. In go it is a compiler error to deviate from their style.
Given that, jsfmt doesn't need 100% adoption: using it in a single project or library would still be useful. Stating new contributions must be jsfmt'ed would be less trouble than most standard pull request requirements (pass + update any relevant testing code, ...).
I personally love these formatting tools and am looking forward to more of them, such as ClangFormat[1].
* You might be thinking of unused variables or imports resulting in compiler errors, which isn't the same as not compiling due to formatting?
func main() { }
vs
func main() { }
which produces the error "prog.go:4: syntax error: unexpected semicolon or newline before {". As I understand it this is because of the rules of where it will insert semicolons. It isn't enforcing everything about the format which is why I said "to a degree" but it is still one of the most opinionated compilers on format that I know of.
Either way, I'm glad they did it. The "where should the curly brace go" is one of the most annoying bike-sheds.
func main()
{
}This program won't compile: http://play.golang.org/p/8DSev4ZjWZ