I worked on the original "open source project" for years, starting in 1998.
Netscape created Mozilla as the first open source project and it was meant to be just that, a project. Netscape would lead and contribute to that project to harness the "net community" to improve the code and then they would package it up, brand it, and advertise it as an end user product.
The project was Mozilla and the product was Netscape.
Along the way it became clear the project was in a better position to build a compelling product than Netscape, and so the project created teams to do that and eventually spun out of Netscape as the independent Mozilla Foundation where I was the first product manager, having been before a project manager.
The Mozilla application suite was actually a R&D product, a functional application minus the easy packaging, proper branding, and marketing of something more polished. As soon as the project was no longer dependent on Netscape for the bulk of its work effort, that R&D product transformed into a genuine product and Firefox 1.0 came soon after as our first, from the start, project+product.
Netscape created Mozilla as the first open source project and it was meant to be just that, a project. Netscape would lead and contribute to that project to harness the "net community" to improve the code and then they would package it up, brand it, and advertise it as an end user product.
The project was Mozilla and the product was Netscape.
Along the way it became clear the project was in a better position to build a compelling product than Netscape, and so the project created teams to do that and eventually spun out of Netscape as the independent Mozilla Foundation where I was the first product manager, having been before a project manager.
The Mozilla application suite was actually a R&D product, a functional application minus the easy packaging, proper branding, and marketing of something more polished. As soon as the project was no longer dependent on Netscape for the bulk of its work effort, that R&D product transformed into a genuine product and Firefox 1.0 came soon after as our first, from the start, project+product.