This isn't as a bad a comparison as you might imagine. There are "rewards" and there are "rewards." It is in the governments interest to spend tax dollars to make the country better for everyone. If they give Purdue grant money to do the research and this process results, then they make it both free to implement and required, then the result is a "reward" where there is less polluted water out there, everywhere.
Similarly when someone spends their time making gcc better and giving way that investment, everyone gets a better compiler. So they have invested a bit of their time and the community as a whole has benefited.
Because they are pursuing a patent on this process, I predict it will never be used for the next 20 years because it doesn't add any "value" for the people who should use it.
This is pure fantasy. Grant money is scarce and drying up everywhere. Not two weeks ago, this administration put a $1 billion dollar cut to the National Science Foundation[1] on the table.
Because they are pursuing a patent on this process, revenue generated by the licensure of this product will flow to the institutions supporting that research. Companies can then be incentivized to pursue licensure.
The scientist that discovered insulin, Sir Frederick Banting, forfeited his right to profit from the patenting of his discovery[2], and yet we have companies to this day restricting supply to wring hundreds of dollars per dose out of patients that depend on the drug. The patent isn't the problem.
> As a thought exercise, compare how much you have benefited from the gcc tools suite being "free and unpatented" versus having it cost you every time you used it.
You present a false dichotomy: that GCC tools be free/unpatented vs having them cost every person on every usage. Just yesterday we saw posts on HN describing the struggle of open source community sustainability and undue burdens on maintainers of free software.
When multi-billion dollar corporations depend on free and open source software, they should be made to contribute in some way.
1. https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/433507-trump-pro...
2. http://www.cdnmedhall.org/inductees/sir-frederick-banting
what in your opinion is the root problem?
[edit] formatting
You could likely fund openSSL properly if people had to pay some minimal tax on it, that could be offset by contributing
The government can, if necessary, use that revenue for incentives to encourage deployment; for example to drop the upfront cost in the short-term to incentivize adoption. Use market-based solutions with aligned incentives instead of trying to pretend there is no market or that incentives aren't misaligned.