> imho the best software is written to scratch a personal itch. Not to appease this customer. Not for other humans.

This statement shows you partially understand, but don't understand the why. You recognize that people working on software for things they truly care about can write better more successful software, but you miss the final step of why that software is more successful.

The reason why Linus can write such great software for software engineers is because he is a software engineer. Fundamentally the software you love is successful for other people, it is for other people and because your idols are one of those people part of that group, they understand it as well as anyone.

Linux was made for passionate hobbyist programmers by a passionate hobbyist programmer. And because it is made for those people, and met their needs perfectly is why it caught on. The reason it met their needs is because Linus understood their needs, because he shared them.

That's the key piece - that great software is written by completely meeting users needs. The easiest way to understand and meet other people's needs is by sharing them. That's the final step of it.

Fundamentally software becomes successful by meeting other people's needs. Anything else that doesn't, you've never heard of.

> imho the best software is written to [...]

What do you mean by "best"? If it is supposed to be judged by the original author of the software alone, your opinion does not matter. If you think your opinion of software written by others matters, then BAM, you've acknowledged what you set out to refute, i.e. Software is written for (or at least its quality can be judged by) other humans. (Unless you're actually a GPT-3 bot in disguise, in which case you win :D)

What you might have shown is that software not written for others can still be great in the eyes of other people, but even that is somewhat nuanced. IIRC one of Linus' egotistical outbursts was triggered by a kernel dev intentionally breaking user-space compatibility. At least in this case Linus' example doesn't support your claims.

I also don't see why "software is written for other humans" necessarily snuffs the fun or interesting aspects out of it. There certainly are large number of un-fun software that serves a commercial purpose, but it doesn't mean that fun software has to be anti-social. Even entries submitted to IOCCC (purposely obfuscated C code written purely for fun) sometimes lead to useful stuff (Fabrice Bellard's work).

> provide social service, employment to the masses,

If I want the computer to do XYZ, and I can provide an XYZ service to other people? They're paying me to do my bug testing, and I get to feel good about it.

If you're providing something that you think is a really good service, but not for people like you, and not for somebody specific you know either, it's probably going to be rubbish.

So if Linus works on Linux for his own selfish reasons, howcome Linux isn't a one-person effort that nobody else is using? And why did they pick the GPL?

It sounds to me like you're describing bad social behavior but generally altruistic motivations with good social behavior but non-altruistic motivations, and you prefer the former over the latter. Sure, thats fine.