[beachy]

> I eventually realized my motivations for developing open source software were rooted in vanity.

Very insightful, but is it in fact a slightly different emotion to that?

In the Mythical Man Month, Fred Brooks says:

> Why is programming fun? What delights may its practitioner expect as his reward? First [..]

> Second is the pleasure of making things that are useful to other people. Deep within, we want others to use our work and to find it helpful. In this respect the programming system is not essentially different from the child’s first clay pencil holder “for Daddy’s office.”

I don't know if this is quite vanity. That sounds a bit too negative. Is this the kind of complex emotion that Germans would have a word for but not English?

[moron4hire]

For the vast majority of people, a program being open source does not make it more useful to them. The program just existing is the useful bit.

Also, Germans don't have words for things. They just remove all the whitespace from their sentences and then run around, "look at this neues word Ich hab!" :D

[account42]

> I don't know if this is quite vanity. That sounds a bit too negative. Is this the kind of complex emotion that Germans would have a word for but not English?

I'd say the need for validation describes that closely enough.