The Joomla! Core Team consists of volunteer developers, creatives, administrators and managers. This well-oiled machine is often copied but never surpassed. Joomla! has some wonderfully talented people taking open source concepts to the forefront of industry standards. Joomla! 1.5 is a major leap forward and represents the most exciting Joomla! release in the history of the project.
The project has a nice balance of legacy development from well-known coders such as Andrew Eddie (who pioneered Mambo's early success) to some young guns like Johan Janssens and Louis Landry. This dynamic trio has been further strengthening the project by bringing in new talent. In open source development people joke about the 'bus' factor. Projects which don't have coding 'spread' are considered less sound should their single lead developer get hit by a bus.
