[neilv]

Scheme is an especially appealing elegant and powerful language. And it attracts people who aren't in software or programming languages for the money.

So, the stakes are very small, in terms of commercial value, but...

If you think of Scheme as an oasis, relative to most popular programming languages and communities, then the stakes can be quite large.

[CamperBob2]

Right, that's what I mean. It doesn't mean something to everyone, but it means everything to a few.

[neilv]

Yeah, I think there's an ambiguous connotation sometimes, such as in "academic politics is so fierce, becuase the stakes are so small" that it might just be people being petty about, say, small-pond status, because they have nothing else.

In this case, however, it might be more that there's an innate value that a small number of people recognize as important, so they care about it in a way that seems outsized, to people who aren't aware of that importance.