Re: "Biology by the Numbers."1 Software licensing is a major factor as to why we do not use MatLab much, or why we do not use some packages, like SAS, at all. We are a 501c(3) non-profit, basic research institute with our own funding, yet many companies like MatLab or SAS will not give us "academic pricing:" because we are not a degree granting institution. Software vendors often refuse to let us share single licenses, and they don't seem to understand they are limiting the availability of their own product, and limiting their likely future user base.
R is becoming more attractive for most analysis problems, mostly because of unreasonable licensing terms imposed by math software vendors. When possible, I'll try to steer most scientists to R now.
