Why wouldn't they be advancing it? It might not be academically rigorous in some cases (in some cases it is) but every single project is doing something unique

Why wouldn't they be advancing it? It might not be academically rigorous in some cases (in some cases it is) but every single project is doing something unique and pushing the sphere of known solutions to problems further out. Very few of the projects even want to be nix clones and are exploring areas that aren't explored by the nixes because they are too big and static now experiment (for good reason! it isn't a fault).