Toady is turning a profit, though. And, personally, I do pay for DF—I've paid more for DF than I have for any other video/computer game, ever. I've also played DF more than I have any other video/computer game.
I think a more "traditional" game design philosophy would hurt DF.
Right now, Toady is at a point where he is living comfortably without having to worry about day-to-day life/rent/etc. He can spend all day doing development, as well as programming.
If he changed to a more traditional model—selling Dwarf Fortress, and running a programming team with other people—he wouldn't be able to do that. To run such a team, he'd have to figure out what needed to be done, he'd have to organize people, figure out who should be doing what, and make sure they're doing it correctly. As well as figure out how to correctly pay people, make sure the company isn't doing anything illegal, etc. There is a ton of purely logistical stuff in running even an informal, not-for-profit project, let alone developing a for-profit computer game.
Frankly, running a project—even a project with only 5-6 other people—is something that takes a particular sort of skill. I'm not sure that Toady's strengths lie in that arena. He's a great programmer, and Zach and he seem to have figured out how to efficiently put out a plan for DF, but running a group of people is entirely different from the current arrangement. Right now, he's able to make pretty fast progress (albeit never as fast as parts of the DF community would like) doing things on his own.
Why change something that, thus far, seems to be working pretty damn well? DF is routinely called the most complicated game ever created, and it has a dedicated (and steadily growing) group of players.
Then Toady can hire a manager if he's so hell bent on working on this project instead of actually getting it done. He can stay in the trenches if that's what makes him happy. All he needs to do is spend a little time up front making sure everyone's on the same page. In my experience, this time would be comparable to the time he's spent between now and the last update.
Today's attitude has completely failed to test reality (note, that's what psychotic actually means). Maybe Toady is just ignorant, maybe he's nuts. In any cayse it's bad for Dwarf Fortress, it's bad for us, and it's bad for him because if he'd listen to guys like Sean, he'd be able to FOCUS more on the stuff that makes him happy.
Unless Toady (as well as ThreeToe—no one seems to remember that Toady is not, in fact, doing everything alone) is willing to entirely sacrifice his creative vision, getting a manager won't work.
I don't know you, and you might be the boss of a corporation or a development studio, well able to get a bunch of people to work together on one creative vision. And if you do have any tips on leading such a project, and you think I'm way off base, then I'd be happy to cede ground.
However, I can talk about my own experience, heading small projects—generally around 5-6 people, and always working on something far, far less complicated and intricate than DF. And you know what? Unless you have a hell of a lot of skill or practice (which I do not, and which it doesn't sound like Toady has) getting people to work on a single project—say, getting everyone to pitch in on a single, very important document so that everything makes sense and fits together—is
really goddamn hard.
It isn't just about delegating authority to a manager. Toady & ThreeToe have a vision of something they want to create. If they were to hire other people to work on that vision and stay true to it, they would have to manage those other people. They can't get a manager to do that, because the manager wouldn't be able to tell the employees exactly what Toady and ThreeToe want.
They have to be able to say to people "here's what we want" with enough specificity that those people can go off and work on something on their own, and come back with something that both fits into the rest of DF, and correctly reflects Toady and ThreeToe's vision.
I'm not a programmer. However, I'm given to understand that working on a program requires a lot more precision and exactitude than just drafting a memo or something. And my experience drafting documents with a group of other people is that it's difficult to lead a project with a bunch of people, and it involves a very, very different set of skills than "writing well." Otherwise it ends up a hodgepodge of different styles, with sections referring to parts of a document that don't exist, and an overarching point that is difficult to decipher.
So yeah, I think entirely changing the design philosophy of DF may very well not be the panacea many seem to assume it would be.