ESR says I'm wrong about reasons to even make something opensource at all:
> Look at the economics from the Programmers* perspective:
> If he is to set aside the enormous time and effort it takes to write a
> program** he has to get something out of it.
>
> 0) "To scratch an itch" can be one of those things
> But why even ever release the program in that case? It makes no
> economic sense to the programmer: he already has what he wanted to
> create: by his own hand; there is little reason to release it to
> others.
You're ignoring several important secondary effects that do in fact
provide rewards for releasing.
But I'm not going to argue this point in detail, because I need to
make money today. With an open-source tool I released (reposurgeon)
that generates consulting contracts for me.