are appimages a way to package AND distribute software or just a way to package?

I heard a while back that appimages are *only* a way to package software, not distribute it; however, if I go to the [wikipedia definition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AppImage) : > AppImage is a format for distributing portable software on Linux without needing superuser permissions to install the application. So is it both a way of packaging and distributing software, or just packaging?