From what I can tell they built a tool for themselves to use internally, and open-sourced it. I don't think they were looking for approval or to be taken seriou

From what I can tell they built a tool for themselves to use internally, and open-sourced it. I don't think they were looking for approval or to be taken seriously. Similarly, Igor built nginx to solve a particular problem, and I think it was a few years before it went open-source. I can't imagine most OSS developers have delusions of grandeur.