Complexity is a source of income in open source ecosystems (2019)
I don&#x27;t have much to say about the R ecosystem, as I am not actively using it or even doing anything using R.<p>&gt; Matloff is also upset about a commercial company swooping in to steal their precious, a common academic complaint (academics swooping in to steal ideas from commercially developed software is, of course, perfectly respectable).<p>This reads like some kind of sarcastic statement. In fact it is indeed perfectly respectable, that academics do this, because it lets our society advance and research progress outside of proprietary software gardens. In my opinion any such kind of action is perfectly respectable, if it shares knowledge with the world. The other way around it is not OK, because from proprietarizing ideas, there is no benefit for society. If a company is worth its salt, it will offer services on top of existing public knowledge, without creating walled gardens. If it cannot do so, then it might be time to realize, that the company should not exist.<p>What is not OK is, if academics take that knowledge and make it seem like they were the ones inventing stuff. One should always give credit where credit is due. Never forget academic honesty. Usually however, a lot of foundational research is done by academics, only to be picked up years later and often by commercial entities dealing in proprietary software.