"" Don't you have to be arguing that a form not allowing modifications to be used or tested is the "preferred form of the work for making modifications"?" You

"" Don't you have to be arguing that a form not allowing modifications to be used or tested is the "preferred form of the work for making modifications"?" You are trying to take parts out and remove context from them. I don't have to argue at all about the preferred form, because it very explicitly says what that is: "The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it. For an executable work, complete source code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable. However, as a special exception, the source code distributed need not include anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component itself accompanies the executable." The first two sentences go together. It defines, explicitly, what the preferred form of complete source code for an executable work includes. So that isn't going to include signing keys unless you want to argue that one of the explicitly enumerated parts includes signing keys. For years, people have argued back and forth about whether the scripts include data files. The general consensus is "no", because otherwise, it has no differentiable meaning from the other parts.