[wakeupcall]

When tied to academic research this has bigger implications.

Reproducibility is difficult or impossible to assess when there's no source, and it also requires higher barriers to entry (= money). The output of that research will also be tied the commercial license: academics can often get better offers, but you as a user are going to be outpriced.

I'm biased for sure, but I'm a deep believer in open research. The output of what I do/did should be free for everyone.

R being fully open and free is a big part in what it made it so popular in research.

[7thaccount]

Agreed. Software that is free for academics might be $10,000/year for an industry user with a ton of red tape to boot. I hate it, but they have to get the money from somewhere unless it's fully open source. Sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn't as well.

As it sits, they like to get users hooked in college and then they're less likely to ever switch.