Mathematica v. "crowd projects": crowds are showing good progress, so?
For example: there are open (and proprietary) chemical modelers now: not just molview: ones that simulate real reactions even in real time - while MM shows only 2D diagrams (or 3D of these - which isn't actual atomic positions). Similarly for electronics: no simulator - and packages that began to make them have "dis-appeared". Similarly for (3d gaming / city type modeling) - the capability is there but a drive to integrate them: not existing.
The number of "for sale add-ons" has reduced: http://www.wolfram.com/products/fields/. It used to be maybe hundreds of projects and books.
The packages that "add functionality", also reduced - but these sometimes became integrated into MM. Instead there's CDF - so many they have to reject submissions: but many simulate a single aspect of a very limited topic. Some of these CDF are amazing and it's an amazing strength of MM to allow the making of them - and they're critical because simulators can't solve these kinds of focused problems.
What all those other projects DO NOT have of course is Mathematica's vast ability. By developing from low level languages - those group projects are mostly closed ended. You can do something if there's a button, if not - forget it.
Mathematica HAS greatly beaten crowd software in some areas - especially mathematics, but in several other areas too. We see WR has a financial package making progress - but the reason for it's success is rather obvious: internal employees are bending mathematica and getting paid - so of course that makes progress (it doesn't count toward the question).
SO MY QUESTION TO ALL IS: Why is mathematica not attracting crowd projects? Is it lack of collaboration feature within the software? Lack of motivation or advertising or web sites (organizing people's efforts)? Are Packages (paclets??) more difficult to share or collaborate? (it Should be easier to share notebooks - noting "upgrades" sometimes cause notebooks to stop working - but that seemed to be during a great transition of 3D graphics over past 2D). Could it even be lack of Grant funding (some of those open projects are backed in "other ways").
QUESTION IS: What feature would lead YOU to work with others and contribute to an open project: "a realtime chemical modeler", "a realtime circuit simulator", "a 3D design interface", "a robot / sensor engine", etc ? (leaving the question of modularity, and if MM is better kept a "tool that can do anything" aside)
thanks all, hope to hear your opinions