You must have done research at well funded universities :)
My experience is quite different. Although after some hassles I was able to get license but it’s online only.
Overall I’m trying to move away from commercial software (I don’t teach any, only use foss) but yeah Mathematica, MKL + ifort are unbeatable in some respects (Matlab is slowly going to be replaced except some specialised toolboxes, don’t use ansys)
Anyway, proprietary and closed source software is in my opinion harmful for academia. Sometimes a lot, sometimes a little but in general it’s no good, although I understand that it funds some development that wouldn’t be done otherwise.
Not sure how I could proprietary/closed software being 'harmful'. If the product is superior and allows researchers/students to do a better or more efficient job then why not (absent severe budget constraints)? It is highly unlikely that those end users would ever modify the code or even need to view the source.
My experience is quite different. Although after some hassles I was able to get license but it’s online only.
Overall I’m trying to move away from commercial software (I don’t teach any, only use foss) but yeah Mathematica, MKL + ifort are unbeatable in some respects (Matlab is slowly going to be replaced except some specialised toolboxes, don’t use ansys)
Anyway, proprietary and closed source software is in my opinion harmful for academia. Sometimes a lot, sometimes a little but in general it’s no good, although I understand that it funds some development that wouldn’t be done otherwise.