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Comment by davexunit | Hacker News Reader

>Shipping obfuscated source code is NOT the same thing as shipping some prepackaged binary.

Yes, it is. Obfuscated source code, like a binary, is not the corresponding source code.

"The “Corresponding Source” for a work in object code form means all the source code needed to generate, install, and (for an executable work) run the object code and to modify the work, including scripts to control those activities."

See: https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html

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Absolutely not! Just because it doesn't jive with GPL doesn't mean JS obfuscation is no longer source. It's not like compiling a C program without debugger symbols. It's the same high-level JS language, it's just "harder to read." The point of saying it's "not source code" is just wrong.

> Absolutely not! Just because it doesn't jive with GPL doesn't mean JS obfuscation is no longer source.

It's not the source code, because its not the first code produced before any automated transformation. Its an intermediate form that happens to still remain text, and remain legal code in the same language as the source code.

You can use a disassembler to get source code out of your binary. If I distribute my binaries with corresponding assembly source (which I obtained from a disassembler), am I distributing my source code?

> It's not like compiling a C program without debugger symbols.

It definitely can be exactly isomorphic to just that via emscripten.

Where do you draw the line? Isn't compiled byte code just harder to read also?

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