I'm sure if you shake the data a little more you'll see that a very small minority do most of the work.

This has always been true - in corporations, in teams within corporations and in startups.

I think you should evolve your product to reflect and incentivize this rather than fight it. Give the core guys the most equity - figure out a good way to calculate who those people are. Its a problem that mankind has been trying to solve forever.

Instead of focussing on community, focus on creating a system that is secure for someone to start working immediately with the core-team. With deep git integration you could have somethign worthwhile there.

How do you deal with people who make it difficult for others to work on the project to increase their own share? This is typical behavior of ladder-climbers in companies already.

Is community not part of the answer to that problem?

I think a project that attracts that kind of person is already pretty successful.

I meant assembly product that people used and had some traction.