It would be surprising if someone that high-performing weren't promoted into a different role. My claim isn't that such differences don't exist among people...

It would be surprising if someone that high-performing weren't promoted into a different role. My claim isn't that such differences don't exist among people... only that we don't say such a group is "collaborating", which (to me) typically connotes some roughly equal breakdown of work. We say that the group has a leader, or that it is "A's project, but X, Y, and Z are helping a little." The OP's thesis is that the rhetoric around "tens of millions of people collaborating to produce OSS" is misleading, and I think his point is fair. Most people would be surprised to see how single-individual-heavy the actual production is.