Even in the Open Source world of Linux you need a backing by a dedicated group of people to propel forward. The off-time, night coders of the community don't have the time to dedicate full-time-job-like effort to the project. This is why things like Ubuntu, Red Hat, SuSE and Mandrake are big - they have a central core group that continues to work on the product; and then they take input from the community on where to go next.