A community based programming group idea

Apocal

I posted this idea at my college, Rochester Institute of Technology, and was wondering what you guys think about it.  Your input will be greatly appreciated.

I am not a game development student, but I am a gamer who has been playing computer games for around 16 years now.  My favorite game off all time would have to be Ultima Online upon it's origional release.  I am a Networking, Security, and System Administration student here at RIT, but I have a great deal of experience with getting people together and getting things done (especially through on-line efforts). 

With the way that community based coding has gone in the recent years, group based programming of large projects are very much doable.  I was wondering what you guys would think about getting together a game development group, not just through this college, but of programmers across the United States and abroad in order to make a well developed MMORPG.

This would include a new graphics engine, content, etc.  With a large group of people working on it, it would turn out to be one of the best mmorpgs to date.  Running the servers could be done on a pre-order base.  A game for the people by the people.

Anyways, enough of a rant! What are your thoughts?

Zindaihas

I've wondered if something like that is really possible.  If so, it would be a great way to bypass the programming industry and send them a powerful message.  But the problem as I see it, is how would you decide on what to put into the game?  All those people working on it would mean a lot of opposing ideas as to what would work and nothing might ever get agreed upon.  But it would also be a great way to build a game without the vast amount of resources required.

Cleffy

I would like that to happen too but there are alot of companies who don't want to share with competitors and alot of programmers who like getting paid.

I know there are multiple programming firms and companies in the US; some of which make properitary engines.  Also there are quite a few solo programmers who make an engine.  A community like the one you specified would be pretty cool as you can further refine existing proporietary engines, bugfix better and release more features in an engine.  The problem like I said above are the companies who don't like sharing.  Like Sony has something like 19 R&D groups.