Maybe just community? Building something useful to oneself, releasing it to find it solves others' problems, seeing one's work have a broad benefit, collaborati

Maybe just community? Building something useful to oneself, releasing it to find it solves others' problems, seeing one's work have a broad benefit, collaborating with others to make it better, etc. Not sure if this is just a positive spin of your "ego" hypothesis, but my gut tells me that it's a categorically distinct motivation.