Quote - Payment or not, the advantage of a team is that whatever one cannot do, others can.

 

Depends on the team. The more skills you need, the more likely that money will be involved. It all boils down to getting what you paid for.

Don't get me wrong: It is an excellent thing to have amateurs coordinate to build something. The existence of Linux is a great example of this. However, the one thing I see missing with most Poser-figure projects of this nature is the challenge. I don't mean the challenge of building something that works, but the challenging of each other.

Let me illustrate what I mean:

In Linux, if you put in new functionality that isn't the absolute best and most efficient for the job? You either have to defend it successfully, or watch your submission get rejected. You have to explain all method deficiencies to satisfaction, and explain why you did something a certain way to anyone who asks. Oftentimes you end up revising your code a dozen times before it gets accepted. If you're improving on something that already exists, your job is 3x as hard, because you have to justify the changes, and balance them against the environment.  

As a result, the Linux kernel (and countless supporting bits) provides a quality and strength that is unmatched in the tech world. 

Now, from what I've (sadly) seen in Poser so far? All too many people put in 'good enough' into a project that has a ton of potential. Add-ons are introduced and trumpeted that contain numerous errors and deficiencies, and the result only detracts from the product itself. I'm not going to name names (people tend to get all upset when I do that) but suffice it to say that nearly every community project in Poserdom has suffered this problem, and it ends up slowly killing the project.

To sum it up? If you want to make something that betters an existing professional job, then you'd better be damned well prepared to do a professional job of it yourself. You must put out your absolute best, and if members of the team cannot do that, then the public side of the project would be better off without them.