[necovek]

Uhm, I've worked on both free software projects that were "a giant hairball" and on nicely structured things to be proud of.

Whoever has ever done something knows that you can help someone more with a messy project that does something than a near-perfect codebase that does nothing of value. And you publish something to help someone else!

A personal project can be done to achieve something or to aim for that illusive perfection we can never achieve at work (or both, ofc: it's not a XOR). Neither is to be discounted!

[jart]

Yes but without vision, elegance, and leadership, open source is just a dumpster for corporations. Sure dumps are very helpful. But it's still a dump. There's no reason why it has to be that way. For example, something like Goodwill that's helpful and pleasant at the same time.