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What does it even mean to have an open-source license on a binary? Aren't those two things kind of contradictory?


License says you can "copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software"

So you can do all those things, but I imagine that modifying is going to be harder than it would be with the source code.


that makes sense, thanks.


Yeah, this struck me as odd too until I realised that the MIT license says nothing about source code. It just talks about redistribution. So what they are saying is that the binary is redistributble for any purpose, but if you want to distribute changed versions of the source code you have to do it under AGPL. That's weird, but potentially OK. The only thing it does is allow you to redistribute the binary without having to supply the source.

The reason I say "potentially OK", though is I wonder if a binary can be assigned a copyright as distinct from the source. The binary is only a machine translation of the source after all. Not a lawyer, so I'm not certain, but it seems a bit odd. I can't imagine a situation where anyone would challenge you, though --- they are giving you extra rights, not removing them.




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