If you don't believe my claim of selflessness, believe my claim of competence: If I was trying to build a personal brand, I could do much better than delving into Vim's codebase for a one-off snippet. It's not difficult to create insubstantial content that is widely-shared. I can think of a dozen topics whose mere mention can drive immense traffic and waste absurd amounts of time. HN's front page attests to this.
It's a shame that many people scrutinize others for selfishness. Purely selfish behavior is an extreme rarity, yet it takes much longer to refute such accusations than to make them. I wish it were otherwise.
Before deriding others, please remember: Almost no one is evil. Almost everything is broken.[1]
1. A quote from http://blog.jaibot.com/