In reply to Nathan.

Howdy, Nathan!

Maybe you just skimmed it, but that's actually addressed in depth by the plugins repository team here: https://make.wordpress.org/plugins/2017/03/16/clarification-of-guideline-8-executable-code-and-installs/

(and all of our themes are 100% GPL -- you can check them all out via svn here if you're so inclined! https://wpcom-themes.svn.automattic.com/ )