Quote - Just to be clear, the main advantages that a company effort has over a 'cottage' one is money,  not necessarily talent.

Well that, and the ability to hire the talent you need. 

A company like DAZ gets burned CD/DVD disks daily, unsolicited. They contain mesh, demo reels, texture samples, things like that. These companies have the wherewithal to visit colleges and get internships from promising students with professional talent. They can afford to hire full-time industry pros. They have the equipment and gear to get the job done, and can procure anything they need beyond that. They can hire models by simply going out and soliciting offers from the local fashion industry.

Community efforts OTOH have to go out and ask for contributors.

 

So as to keep hyper-sensitive nerves from being ruffled, let's draw from a project I once was a part of: Weapons Factory MOD for Unreal Tournament.

Sometimes you get lucky and someone quite badassed will come on board, contributing something that definitely makes the project shine (the guy who did our skins/textures - total badass). Sometimes still you get ungodly lucky and more than one badass will pitch in. 

More commonly though, you have to wade through a mountain of dreck by decidedly non-professional contributors, and either find polite ways of saying no, or you somehow have to make do with what you do get until something better comes along. You end up with a core of a badass or two (the coders), a few competent folks helping out when they can (this is where I sat with some code, mapping, and sound effects), and a whole bunch of half-assed amateurs with pretense hanging on at the periphery.

Just the way it is, really.