I agree with your article. I think that this example doesn’t quite illustrate it:
Before you install Linux, do you think “What’s the positive consequence of installing Linux?” or does it just seem like the sort of thing a free-software-supporter would do?
The first few times I did this, it was the second motivation. After a while, it became the first, namely that I got a system I had better control over, incorporating high-quality software. However, the first motivation was very good for the second. Without (lots of) people doing the sort of thing a free-software supporter would do, most of the good software I use out of work would not be available to me.
Your sentence has a strong/weak dichotomy whereas I think either motivation is acceptable.
This reminds me of certain behaviours I have read about in, for example, books by Walter Scott, where he is writing about Covenanters. Their behaviour is very similar to setting an oath and never allowing it to be broken. They usually did not allow exceptions, not even ones which are included in the initial oath. Or only after the most careful analysis.
They also had a refinement where they could identify “falling off on the left”, as straightforward failure and “fallingoff on the right” as, basically, over-doing it. Three hours study instead of two, that sort of thing.
Likewise, in his book “Surely you are joking”, Feynman discusses his family trait for always telling the truth, no matter how inconvenient, which seems to me to have similar overtones to the ideas here.
My point is that the behaviour is not uncommon and I would guess that in general, it was followed for intuitive reasons, not on the kind of formalism that picoeconomics is. If picoeconomics describes this kind of behaviour then that would be good.