Over time the core team became less insular and included everyone in discussions, decisions, and resolutions of tough technical problems. Today Subversion has 52 blanket committers who are allowed to make changes to any part of the product. There are 71 other project members with more limited focus. The Subversion team also includes 123 people who create, test, build, document, distribute, and translate the Subversion client and server. All of these people are distributed with only very small groups working in the same location.
The Subversion project is very successful. It is a standard for version control in the open source world and has penetrated into corporations where open source has never been before. Over time most of the core team has left the project, but the project is thriving with a new wave of contributors from all around the world. This is the ultimate proof that their efforts to create an open team paid off.