Not the commenter, but yeah, I think I do.

Setting out to do something commercial (and succeeding), is different from setting out to do something firmly non-commercial and then commercialising it. The second one will almost always involve compromise that was never intended, which often undermines the original, non-commercial version.

Maybe not for what-ever-reason, but I do respect someone who can read the market and build what the market needs, more than someone who stumbles into it. It also means that he stuck with his guns. He didn't "sell out", he decided to just "sell".

Note that you're asking whether it's more impressive that someone managed to analyze and intentionally create an appealing, cross-cultural, and marketable product, rather than creating something appealing completely by accident. Of course the former is far more impressive than the latter, assuming it really was intention as laid out by the OP. It requires intelligence and understanding of the world.

I think building a business is hard, and people that succeed at it (in a generally non-harmful way) are impressive. Setting out to build a business and succeeding, as opposed to stumbling into it unawares, is indeed more impressive to me, I think.

Obviously. You're not a "sell-out" if you are honest up front about your work being commercial.

I find both doing it for money, and doing it for personal or benevolent reasons to be good. What I find despicable is claiming you're doing something for selfless reasons, but actually doing it for profit. That's what dishonest and shows ill will towards other human beings.

(Doesn't have to be strictly about money either. The amount of voices you could hear saying they won't be writing blog articles or OSS because it'll become training data for LLMs, and that this thus deprives the world of their pro bono work, clearly shows there's plenty of such dishonest attitudes in OSS circles too.)

Well, at least he sold something. Only halfway joking. Because probably worse than knowing you put slop out is putting thing out nobody likes.