But where does it live?
For the longest time, I thought that programs were their source code. Yes, source code is a liability, yes, it is a ship of Thesus. Yes, it is the DNA that makes the program do what it does, and yes, it is the DNA that passes on when someone copies it. But is a program its source code?
No. Now I think programs are constructs in the minds of the living beings that make them. Programs don't run on machines, they do, but that's an even shallower placement than attributing the program's existence to its source code. Programs run in the minds of the people who are making them.
Some programs, in fact most programs that you might've heard of, are bigger than what can be run in the mind of the person writing them. These run socially, across minds. And if a program is useful, it also starts running in the minds of the people who use it, even though they might have never seen the source code.