I agree with your first statement, this match what I've witness when I learned coding by doing my own private sever.

But I can ensure you that my motivation wasn't money, and I don't think it's the case for most starting projects. How ever, with success come temptation, also if you can easily justify getting some cash

I could hire some dev, I could get a better server, do some promotion, etc...

And then when money arrive it's hard not to feel all your hard work doesn't deserve a bit of the share.

To me the main issue is that there is no legitimate way to license blizz IP and give back a share.

TurtleWoW wasn't a simple "recycle the content and don't pay for retail" type, and those are actually a lot of work interesting take on the classic game.

It's a shame there are no good legal way to make a legit business to explore those ideas more seriously and for the "private server scene" to grow up in it.