Yes, that's unfortunately true on OSX (to be clear, this isn't a problem with Linux & its `inotify`).  If you google for '/dev/fsevents root', you'll find quite a few people trying to get around this limitation in OSX, but, alas, that doesn't appear to be possible.

Examples:

* Note from author about this problem: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/lsyncd/u6Z050gWuWA/QOMDPZcK2FQJ
* Commentary re: `fsevents` requiring root: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4429270/macos-x-file-system-watcher