GitHub has technical solutions to technical problems. Developers with a problem to solve often find something they can use on GitHub. Although there are some more product-like repositories on GitHub, most repos are too far away from users to be called a product. They are free technical solutions for other developers to make product of. GitHub has the building blocks - built by developers to address a technical issue, put out to the world for free. It is often unclear in what shape, if ever, a repository on GitHub will reach end users.

Contrast this with Product Hunt, which has an audience that extends outside of software developers. For instance, although many AI-related repos are trending on GitHub, none make their real-world use case as clear as Atua on Product Hunt. Atua gives "instant ChatGPT access on any Mac app with a simple hotkey". Atua has a business model around this, whereas repos on GitHub are mainly free.

There is a gap between GitHub and end users. That gap consists of finding a real market opportunity, applying a business model, writing additional code for a specific use case, branding, support, and more. These parts are done within companies. Companies package open-source code, make it easy to use, provide distribution and support, and charge for it. Companies have a business model while open-source projects don't.

Consider Linux as an example of how this typically looks today. Linux is open source. There is a plethora of distributions built on Linux, like Ubuntu and Manjaro. They package open-source code and make it easy for businesses and consumers to use. Ubuntu is as easy to get started with as Windows. That is because people at Ubuntu are doing work to take the Linux kernel and turn it into a product. Ubuntu comes with support if you pay for it. Other than that, revenues are primarily donation-driven. The company receives those donations. This is opaque because it's not obvious by default how the donations are used (although some companies can report this at their discretion). It is also limited because the company can't pay contributors broadly. The Linux kernel itself doesn't have a business model, but Ubuntu does. There is of course the Linux Foundation, but they don't own the code directly. The main problem with this is not so much with Linux as much as that a lot of code remains at the Linux-kernel stage rather than making it to the Ubuntu stage.

But cryptocurrencies can change some of this. An under-appreciated fact of digital money is that it integrates natively with code, enabling it to have an intrinsic business model. For instance, each time a particular event occurs that may trigger a payment. Incorporating payments directly into code is simpler because it can be done entirely within the realm of software development. It takes the business model fully into the home turf of developers.

Compare Linux to Uniswap. Uniswap is an open-source project, a decentralized crypto exchange. Not only is the Uniswap community building the algorithms required to run such an exchange and putting them out in the open. They are building the final pieces too - building the actual exchange, with branding and web. Uniswap is a product. In the code, there are ways to enable fees that flow to tokenholders with each transaction. When the owners decide to, they can activate that fee that flows to the owners. Uniswap is a natural place to start with something like this because it is crypto-native. But there is no reason why the same model cannot be applied more broadly. Linux could have been open source all the way to the end user, with revenue flowing also to those who contribute to the Linux kernel. This tightens the gap, making it worthwhile to build true open-source products rather than technical solutions to technical problems.