Design by massive collaboration is very successful; Wikipedia.org is a great example. It has become without eccentricities of a personal bias. Although, Wikipedia still has a strong personality amazingly. This proves we can be more intelligent as a community. The issue with collaboration is the speed of communication; it’s better if when collaborating to work in close proximity. This increases the efficiency, and languages used to communicate. That’s why such great things have come from Charles and Ray Eames, they were married to each other. That closeness is essential; free software brings people closer together and thus great things have and will continue to come from it.

Thanks for your comment & response.

What do you mean by “free software is humane at its core”? Do you mean that because you can modify it, it is inherently more humane that non-free software? That’s an interesting perspective.

You’re right that it’s most important the there is a clear vision for a product, but I also think that it’s easiest if that vision comes from a single person. In art and design, it’s very rare for a clear, consistent aesthetic to be produced by more than one person. Of course there are some exceptions of artistic partnerships (Lennon and McCartney, Charles and Ray Eames, Joel and Ethan Coen, etc.), but there is a reason that “design by committee” is a pejorative term.

The comment form should actually say this (oops), but the comment boxes on this site accept Markdown format, which allows for most of the formatting that you would want to use I think.