[sanderjd]

Yep, free software originated among academics employed by institutions who paid them for things things other than their creation of software. And good on them!

But there just aren't enough professors, grad students, or young people with plenty of extra time on their hands, to build all this stuff for free.

[bevekspldnw]

Also, that code tends to be proof of concept, full of bugs, and never audited or used in production.

Academic peer review doesn’t include code review.