I've come across a couple of very cool French research/open source projects that haven't gone anywhere. eg http://old.koalateam.com/XML/serialization/ http://ol

I've come across a couple of very cool French research/open source projects that haven't gone anywhere. eg http://old.koalateam.com/XML/serialization/ http://old.koalateam.com/XML/serialization/ (I know it's Java and XML, but consider the date: 1999. And it was just an incidental part of a larger project). They seem very insular, doing everything themselves and eventually running out of steam/funding - which reminds me of lisp projects (or... academic projects in general). I get the impression that the French academic culture emphasizes beautiful theory over pragmatism (e.g. Laplace vs. Lord Kelvin, IIRC). A great ideal, worked for Einstein.. but for few others.