Because any StringUtils.isEmpty(string) or StringUtils.joinToString(string, “,") is clearly meant to be an extension on String so that you can call string.isEmpty() and string.joinToString(","), and Kotlin gives you that opportunity if you throw off your Java shackles and don’t create __Utils classes that just ruins auto-complete on your type lookup. If you really need to “scope” them then I guess it’s similar to how you would have done import static blah.* in Java, but this sort of scoping is overrated and can be offset with proper naming conventions and descriptive method names.