The only real feature of Docker is the ability to keep unmaintained software running as the world around it moves forward. Academics could do the same thing by just distributing read only VMs as well.
Surely containers make it far easier to deploy/distribute maintained software as it makes it so much easier for people to switch to a newer version without needing to worry about incompatible versions of libraries etc. that can break something else. It can be used for pinning a specific older version of software for "reasons", but I think that's less common.
Consider people using a containerised NgINX webserver as a reverse proxy - it's so much easier to keep it up to date compared to using a distribution's version of NgINX.
