Good model for maintaining an existing codebase, but not for designing good ones from the ground up. It works best with a singular leader (or geographically centered leaders) who can make the overall architectural and engineering decisions.
I'm not personally aware of any well-designed[1] codebases made by more than a handful of people. As far as I can tell, most good "architectural and engineering decisions" are either made by a relatively small number of people or emerge from a combination of necessity and attentive devs, regardless of whether they communicate in-the-flesh on a regular basis.
I'd be interested in seeing/reading about cases of good "greenfield" projects where major architectural decisions weren't made almost exclusively by a relatively small number of people, particularly if the number consisted of more than one digit.
How about the Linux kernel? Essentially, it began as something very basic in 1991 when communication methods were much different than we have today (e.g. video conferencing, etc.)[0]. There are many other examples of high quality open source projects that were born or greatly improved on the Interwebs, e.g. Git, Apache, ...
This is speculation, but I think if Linus had a team a tenth of the size of the kernel team in one physical location they could get just as much done.
I'd love to see negating or supporting data either way, it's just my opinion that if you want a team of engineers (as opposed to a singular dictator) to build you something amazing (C Language, SR-71, Saturn V) they need to be in the same physical location and see each other face to face.