There's a very legitimate answer to your question: some people believe that having your code be actually used, at scale/ in the real world, is a benefit in and

There's a very legitimate answer to your question: some people believe that having your code be actually used, at scale/ in the real world, is a benefit in and unto itself; you get a "portfolio", a "brand" - things that are intangible but still valuable. If your code makes it into some mission-critical system, you have a fair shot at consulting for that "massively wealthy corporation". I guess it all boils down to: "do you get more value out of people using your code, or out of keeping the code to a restricted set of people?". Similar to how there are two ways to approach your billion-dollar-startup-idea: either guard it with NDA & limit sharing; or talk to everyone about it. Both are legitimate approaches, but really, in a lot of cases the "billion-dollar-idea" is not really worth that billion dollars. Same with code - in a lot of cases, the code is not as valuable as we'd like to think, until it's actually used (& gets a chance to be refined by many users, and to evolve in the right direction(s)).