It can be both. This is an important point though, nonetheless, as if you are looking for a "product" and you choose an open source "project" without considering what it means, you may have a bad time.
This tweet[1] struck a chord with me when I saw it the other day, I almost couldn't find it when this thread reminded me:
>> I just don't buy the "many eyes make all bugs shallow" thing. It takes so much time to build the context to understand wtf some code is doing that the "many eyes" get whittled down to "very few" very quickly
> This is not just a technical problem, it's a social one too. In practice, 99.999% of users of open source software engage with and expect to be treated as customers of open source, not as collaborators in a communal endeavor to build and maintain it.
To these people, it is a product. For a healthy community, we may need to find a way to get them to see it as a project. And perhaps not just one (eg. how many open source projects are in your team's product stack, and how often do you all think about that?)
[1]: https://twitter.com/searls/status/1174955330582695938
