>It's crazy to me that researchers prefer to be published over having world renowned software to their name. You could figure out the fanciest database research, but there was a period where every fancy new NoSQL database was based on BerkeleyDB despite all that, bolstering the reputation of the University of Berkeley.

Unless the BerkeleyDB was written based on novel research, it didn't move the state of the art forward, it was just a good, used, embeded database.

In which case, your statement can be rewritten as:

"It's crazy to me that researchers prefer to be known for their research over being known as developers of popular programs".

Doing research is the reason they went to an academic career, if they wanted to be developers, they'd just have gone and be developers.

So, why not strike two birds with one stone, and make high quality widely used software that's ALSO state of the art research based?

Well, because creating "high quality widely used software" is a different process, and needs different resources, dedication, and even skills, than doing research.

To showcase some novel research in practice is much much faster, easier, and cheaper to create "half finished demonstration software", that to create a mature, final, implementation that people can use.

So, either they slow their research considerably, and spent most of the time doing software development work - which besides slowing down the pace of research will also count against them in their academic field, they opt to focus on research and just do simple implementation that are not production ready and aren't meant to be.

Seen in this light, it's not a "crazy" choice, it's an essential tradeoff.