This sounds like they are reversing the likely cause-and-effect:<p>"Even in larger teams, high-impact teams have core and support cadres. A small number — sometimes just one — of the team do the majority of the work, while other, non-core members act in support roles."<p>Successful projects will tend to bring in a larger number of contributors, most of whom will only make a few contributions. So successful projects will tend to have this pattern. But it is the success of the project that creates that pattern, not the other way around. Lots of projects are not successful, so no one ever contributes to them.
In the teams where one person does more than all others combined, why is that described as "a successful team" rather than "a successful person who succeeds despite a bunch of hangers-on"?
I find that most mature projects are incredibly hesitant to accept patches.<p>I have found critical bugs in some projects and the people with repo access let the pull request sit there for a year or more.
The summary at the top seems to indicate that a team will have high impact if one guy does all the work and have a "team" unimportant work. So not quite what I was hoping to see.