so, im gonna ramble a bit here but
personally (and i think for most ppl) we do/did it for the learning experience and just a pure love of the game and the engine and everything about it
no one is making tribes stuff for the fame. clearly.
i made configs and plugins for myself. if other people want them too, that's cool with me. if not, who cares. i have a ton of stuff i never released or even showed off because im not doing it for anyones approval
its also much easier to start to understand an older game and how that works rather than start to try to reverse engineer a CS:GO or something like that (and get vac banned). ive heard plenty of stories about how Tribes 1 scripting is what got people into code and led to successful career that they enjoy.
i couldn't write a line of code in any language in 2007 and never thought i'd make a plugin - or even really understood what a plugin was. and even though my plugins are really stupid and basic and i needed and got a lot of help, im still pretty proud of them. not because im e-famous or because people still speak of the legendary Bluelines.dll (lol) but because i learned a lot and i accomplished something i never thought i could or was even possible.
and i'll be really honest, sometimes i just did it as a hobby to keep my mind off of other shit in my life. i think pretty much everyone has some hobby or wasteful use of time, something you do to relax...
some people do really weird shit like whittle their own forks and spoons, some people play an instrument, some people drink or do drugs or cheat on their wife or fuck idk but at least with this hobby you learn a pretty diverse set of computer and programming skills - and if some fellow tribes nerd on the interweb gets some enjoyment out of it too, thats a bonus!
i learned a shit ton and i never even touched any of the opengl stuff broast is doing, i kinda wish i'd kept learning and gotten into that stuff more so i could help because i think his project is awesome