Earlier quoted context omitted.
you cannot be more correct. too many elite programmers are not only jerks, but also selfish egoistic masochists who deny any right to others to be wrong now and then, while still fit for work. yet - same jerks often complain having difficulties finding help (typically overseeing the quite obvious reason for it). no, this is not a hate comment, but a sad one, as rarely people ask why so many opensource projects are le…
I think you're onto something about showing off. You just won't hear as much relative to their importance about the projects led by entirely uncontroversial people who don't care about attention. Another aspect is that in a lot of disciplines, a certain level of maniacal persistence increases your chance of success. To take the "mythical" 10k hours to mastery, it's a lot easier to get to 10k hours if you're not spend…
also there is great number of great people that are very great at coding and not so great at communicating with other people.
so what is emphasized here in my comment is that the kind of opensource project that is inclusive and led by s.o. who knows how to express empathy and has time to also be involved with other people is more valuable as a community effort.
not going into discussion whether openssl is better of with one single dev or not, whether sqlite3 is more important than a serenityos etc.