@mjg59 i simplify this by saying that the more bloated a project becomes, the closer it approaches a binary blob. my original interest was electronics, which makes me very sympathetic to free hw. i appreciate takes like yours that point out the times where machine code / decompiled binaries actually works like source code. not all hacking is source hacking- a lot of it isnt actually.
the other side of that of course, is that source code makes many changes more accessible.