Many programs are distributed only in machine code form which is straightforward to translate into assembly language, but more difficult to translate into a higher-level language.

By contrast, the software environment the scripts are written for is typically written in a compiled language and distributed in machine code form; the user may not have access to its source code, let alone be able to modify it.

Project Gutenberg is dedicated to increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed in machine readable form.