Yes but in proprietary research you've got fewer peers to bounce ideas off of, and you've got extra constraints to deal with re: coming up with something that's useful in tandem with whatever other proprietary bits are in your stack.

All that cloak and dagger stuff comes at a cost, so it's only worth paying if you think you can maintain your lead while continuing to pay it. If the open source community is able to move faster because they are more focused on results than you are, you might as well drop the charade and run with them.

It's not clear that that's what will happen here, but it's at least plausible.