> Microservices don't even have to run in separate binaries, let along separate machines.

If you're not running separate binaries, what you have is a monolith with well-defined module boundaries, not a set of microservices.

Which is actually much better than a distributed monolith (random microservices thrown together just because it ticks some boxes on managements resumes)

Agreed! I think a well-structured monolith is what most projects call for.

What I don't want is for people to buy the microservices hype so thoroughly that they start thinking "microservices" just means "well-architected system".

I guess a binary is pretty vague. They could mean they deploy a single container image or something.

If you have a single deployment unit, you have a monolith, regardless of how that deployment unit is structured on the inside. There's a lot of fuzziness about what "microservices" means, but some degree of independent deployability is pretty non-negotiable.

You can have of course have a single binary deployed with different versions for different services.

More commonly the binaries would differ but share a lot of code in a library of the monorepo.