I haven't "known" Dean or Bill personally, so I only rely on what I saw from them on the forums.
Dean has indeed received a lot of criticism regarding the modeling of his Steaman.
The fact is that his Stearman had indeed some important modeling issues which were pointed out by the community, sometimes in a harsh way.
The reaction of Dean was perfect: he acknowledged the issues and he proceeded to solve them with several updates.
Same went with his F-15, where he even got involved into the freeware mod that was made to improve his original model (flight model and gauges if I'm not mistaken).
Dean is staying close to the community. Maybe he's not involved so much in SOH, but he is definitely active on the official forums.
Last time I saw Bill on this forum was when he released, or was about to release his Learjet 24.
He also received a lot of criticism regarding the 3D modeling of that plane. As far as I remember, it was essentially about the front windows which were obviously out of proportions. This was easy to see by comparing with pictures of the real plane. However, and again just from what I remember, Bill's reaction was the total opposite of Dean: he refused to recognize the problem or to make any modification, and that ended up with him leaving the forum.
Maybe my remembrance of these events is not accurate or I didn't interpret the fact correctly, but it's just the feeling I got from these events at that time.