Kafka,
It depends on what the objective is. As a commercial interest, Traveller may not be the most lucrative RPG to follow, but it certainly has a loyal and dedicated following who are only too willing to see the product flourish. That's where I would take your point about successful collaborative efforts to develop anything which tends to be sensitive to its adherents.
As far as I'm concerned, the thing that marks a game out from the crowd is the background and not the mechanics. A single person can sow the seeds of a great idea, but it usually takes a team (I use it in the loosest sense) to give it a life of its own. That's what Traveller has, and that is why I like 'Fading Suns' for example - another Sci-Fi game with a very rich background and feeling, but very different from Traveller.
I see many people on the forums who have expressed many opinions over which version is better, or worse. I don't see it like that. Yes you can prefer the mechanics of one edition over the others, but I think it is secondary. And yes you can be left with a system that is unplayable. But Traveller is greater than that. Use what you like.
There are many, many things in the mechanics of all the rule sets that I've bothered to read that just don't make sense to me, and in SGK some of these things we occasionally addressed. And why we didn't try to stick to one rules set.
I'm part of a small group that meets infrequently for half a days gaming and we play a selection of RPGs - next time in a week or two we are playing 'Ringworld'. When we done a few sessions of that I'm going to give them Traveller, with the 'World of Darkness' Storyteller system as the base mechanic. That's because that is my favourite system - right now at least. I let you know how it works.
That's enough of me rambling...
Leighton
PS If anyone's interested in the WoD ST system for Traveller...