>>Please explain your comment.
>
>You are an (over sensitive) supporter of Ayn Rand. Her message is about the free market . The motivation about replacing a piece of garbage is presumably about it being a "nice little earner" not about your concern about your fellow Americans being short changed and needing to somehow "set that right". Or are you about to start a period of redeveloping systems for the public good?

I'm afraid you either didn't read nor understand.

Many developers have some additional motivation when they see something horribly built and know they can do better. It might be from their passion as software developers, or to seek recognition from peers/managers, or to help their team as a whole, and yes, maybe because they see financial incentive. It might be all of the above. In the case of the one example I gave, I was an employee and didn't make an extra dime off it, at least not directly.

This kind of motivation can be really important in finding the top talent. When I've interviewed people, I ask a test question..."If you could change three things in SQL Server....if you had total control over the product team and could direct them to make three enhancements/changes, what would they be?" I'm not so much interested in the specifics of their answer - I want to detect their temperature level in speaking about "what is" vs "what ought". It's an aspect of the developer psyche that is often tied to success - because there's a ton of crap out there, and I want to see some boldness of thought process. (Mind you, I'm not saying SQL Server is crap....it's a great product....but if someone is bold enough and experienced enough to tell me three things they think should be changed, it can say a great deal about the person.)

In general, I don't follow the concept of the "public good". It's not part of my values to evaluate things by social standards. And speaking of Ayn Rand, her favorite writer was Aristotle, who wrote about the great souled man. By contrast, a man is dangerous if he says he doesn't care about money or his own goals/visions and only cares about the public good.