Am I right that BCN is an academic project? I've recently read a post by DStrange on reddit and a lit bit confused if it is still a project and or something more than a project
Could you, please, write a link to that post? I'd like to read it.
As for your question, I think that it was developed as a project but then developers realized that the project has a huge potential. As far as I remember, CN developers team has announced that there was a CN-based coin before BCN but it wasn't launched, and then they've created BCN and launched it in 2012.