What do you mean by "info" on the Options line? They tend to be little one-man-band e-books, where one of us got a wild hair and a gleam in his eye, so we asked the bosses if we could have a slice of budget to write up something about X. They give us enough rope to hang ourselves, maybe toss a little artwork our way (or maybe not), and then slap "optional" on it when it's done, because we're rolling up our sleeves and making something we love cooler (in our head) but more complex (in everyone else's).
That's...I mean, that's the Options line in a nutshell.
It basically got kicked off with Way of the Adept, where the writer felt he was fixing some balance inequalities, but no one else involved felt the fix was needed, and/or they felt it was adding too much complexity to the otherwise-dirt-simple "make an Adept, buy stuff." They liked what was written enough to publish it, but were concerned about the balance issues, so called it optional and it went to print.