Doesn’t packaging modify the original artwork?
It does and it doesn’t. A Debian package, for instance, contains your original source code in its original pristine form, and all the changes made by the packager are stored in separate files called patches. This way you, your users and art historians of the future can have the best of both worlds: integrity of the artwork and full compatibility of the binary. But my artwork depends on a very specific and unique piece of hardware! If your artwork is only true to itself if it runs on a unique and particular piece of hardware that cannot be reproduced, then it is an art installation, not software art according to our definition, it could never be packaged and distributed anyway, and you are reading the wrong FAQ. And if that specific and unique piece of hardware is an old computer that most people can’t have access to, maybe we can reproduce it under emulation, and have your Software Art work run on that emulator.
