[gedrap]

>>> which they wouldn't have to do alone if it was open

Well, that's an assumption. User base is very small, and potential contributors base is even smaller. So that would be a big bet hoping that someone would contribute to make it worthwhile.

However, your statement is true when it comes to more mainstream technologies like ruby or javascript.

[phkahler]

But each company has it's own tools. That means redundant development. If they just worked on one set of open source tools, it should reduce development costs. It also opens the door to researchers to try things directly in the mainstream tools. That means not having to re-implement things published in papers, but instead deciding weather or not to merge a feature from a branch.