What do you think motivates people to submit a Show HN? Typically they expect to get something out of it that they don’t get by their project just sitting on GitHub.
I don't know about you but I'm speaking from experience, not hypothetically. I shared multiple open source side projects where I made something for myself then shared it with the world.
> Typically they expect to get something out of it that they don’t get by their project just sitting on GitHub.
Can you expand? the vast majority of open source projects don't make a dime. I don't see the ulterior motive you're talking about. Unless you mean like they get more GitHub stars?
What motivated you to share them? What outcome did you expect?
I’m not talking about revenue. I’m talking about the fact that sharing their creation usually comes with expectations of some (at least psychological) benefit for the sharer. For example, some people want to receive praise for the project. Or they may want to attract collaborators. Still others actually do seek criticism in order to potentially improve the work.
Therefore, “sharing without expectations” doesn’t seem a likely occurrence in that context. People do have expectations, if only unconsciously, and others react with the understanding of such expectations being present.
But there was nothing demanded that the users needed to do. Just "Hey I made this cool thing and it does XYZ." That was my point. If the word 'expectations' entails things like one feeling good about making a small difference in the world then I meant something else and that was a poor choice of words on my part.