Expanding my analysis more (since I was yet to be corrected), it is yet to be answered (or maybe even tried) what are the actual benefits of close community involvement in product/service creation. ZogG implied it would (or could) be a huge asset. But how huge? I think no-one has tried it yet, in large scale at least. Maybe mostly because of the uncertainty surrounding the actual "level" of helpfulness... I think that's a huge stumbling block in "total" openess to community (in reasonable levels). By the way I think there's a huge potential in this community at least

With that being said, I wish I could some day see such a company/community interaction in practice. It may only work in small-scale projects, but I hope one day some big one was done the same way... Just to prove the concept.

What I wrote above may be irrelevant to recent forum symbiosis discussion in this thread. I hope the semi-merge (or what it's called) comes to reality in some way or another, but I'm sure even if it doesn't happen most regulars here aren't going to disappear.