> it is fairly clear that producing source code with the explicit goal of reproducing a 1:1 binary is in no way transformative, so that's out. This would be a really hard argument to even attempt.

Absolutely false. There are an infinite number of programs that will compile to the same machine code. Especially when an optimizer is involved. Discovering one of those is a creative process, transformative, and protected.

Using an LLM to do it for you? I wouldn’t touch that with a 10 foot pole. Seems too close to mechanical transformation to me.