Being “a world class software platform” (Linux, WebKit, Microsoft Office, and so on) appears to come at a considerable price in terms of code quality and bloat.
The OpenBSD community takes it upon themself that by being relatively obscure, they can put a greater emphasis on quality than is the standard for “world class software platforms.”
In essence, what I am doing is gradually putting together a miniaturized “BSD-like” operating system, again in hopes that doing so will allow me to have a greater focus on quality than is possible in the bigger, more mainstream projects.
Now, all that being said, another thing that is interested to think about in relation is the IKEA effect: the perception that things that you need to do some of your own effort are of higher quality than things bought readymade.
20190908/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IKEA_effect
But alas, this is where the specifics of the facts come into play. In software development, if you are using “ready-mades,” that means you are basically restricted to using very large and complex software libraries, trying to tout in themselves that they are a software platform. The problem is that this kind of software simply just doesn’t fit on a traditional PC microcomputer. Even the most trivial of programs will be terribly bloated and exceed the memory capacities of your system!
For this reason, most software written for early 8-bit PC microcomputers was almost exclusively written by only a single programmer. It had to be, lest they produce too much code too fit into the system. With only one programmer overseeing the whole ordeal, they had full control over restricting what code gets included and excluded from the software, so as to optimize it for the specifics of the highly limited computer system.
So, returning to the IKEA effect in thid discussion, sure, it wholly applies if you are talking the large computer systems only. But for small computer systems, do-it-yourself does have a considerable benefit and payoff.