Yes it is really, I think. The self-motivation is one thing. If you build it yourself it's because you either need it or want it enough. If you build something

Yes it is really, I think. The self-motivation is one thing. If you build it yourself it's because you either need it or want it enough. If you build something you get self confidence based in reality and experience based in something. It is expected that only few of the personal projects are ever interesting to someone else. Maybe hacking on some small stuff for four years is what you need to be able to graduate to know enough real world stuff to contribute to bigger projects in practice, then that's just how it is. Now I think of neovim and it's ecosystem right now because I'm in that phase, but most of the small plugins are driven by single people alone, and they can still have a ton of users. Is it still open source? Yes, it's open source if it has an open source license. You are correct that an open project and open source are not the same thing and don't need to be.