That's the subtlety, the clause is introduced thus: > Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associa

That's the subtlety, the clause is introduced thus: > Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software") And I maintain that the use of this in reference to the software is dispositive that it doesn't refer to anything which doesn't exist in the repo/tarball/whatever, particularly not object code, and that the reference to associated documentation files is evidence that the omission was deliberate. This is why lawyers should write licenses though. The ambiguity sucks.