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Decentralized research data management (dRDM) systems handle digital research objects across participating nodes without critically relying on central services. We present four perspectives in defense of dRDM, illustrating that, in contrast to centralized or federated RDM solutions, a dRDM system based on heterogeneous but interoperable components can offer a sustainable, resilient, inclusive, and adaptive infrastructure for scientific stakeholders: An individual scientist or lab, a research institute, a domain data archive or cloud computing platform, and a collaborative multi-site consortium. All perspectives share the use of a common, self-contained, portable data structure as an abstraction from current technology and service choices. In conjunction, the four perspectives review how varying requirements of independent scientific stakeholders can be addressed by a scalable, uniform dRDM solution, and present a working system as an exemplary implementation.