[kukx]

> for free, as it was American taxpayers who financed this project.

Just because something was financed by taxpayer money does not mean it should be free. It is definitely not a rule or how things work. Although I am curious what are the disadvantages of making it free, I bet there are some, even if lightweight.

[photochemsyn]

If not entirely free, certainly a non-exclusive commercial licensing model with low fees makes more sense. This was how the system worked before Bayh-Dole Act was passed in the 1980s (one result was that corporations wanting to do strictly proprietary research were then incentivized to finance large private research institutions like Bell Labs).

[culopatin]

From a nationalist standpoint. A country sets the playground right for this kind of development to happen though funding, freedom, support, whatever. I imagine that the people putting in this effort want to harvest the benefits within their own economy, and not just gift it away. Some roadblocks might be associated with this.

[motohagiography]

Speculating, but would a 1-2% sales tax that was offset from other taxes on products that used a govt patented TCP/IP have hampered development? It wouldn't have hurt FOSS because a 1% sales or import/export sales tax on old unix install media wouldn't have been significant, and once we had FOSS, we could have included the patented tech in free versions, where it was only when you sold media the sales tax was applied.

Not sure how many patents are held in limbo by govt, but well crafted rules about just a sales tax on products that include govt patented techs could be a plausibly fair way to recoup research investments while making them free to innovation. It's somewhere between the way the (pernicious) RIAA/FACTOR collects royalties on music via surcharges on broadcast and streaming, old "shareware" licenses, and the viral aspect of the GPL, but instead it's via a sales tax.

It could be a unique case for opening up patent archives but then adding a niche licensing and import/export tax on products that use the govt patented materials or technology. Even though I think the idea of using taxes as incentives is fundamentally broken, and there is someting dystopian about universities effectively collecting private taxes through the patent system, in a case like technology transfer, it opens up the tech for innovation and doesn't collect until revenue and profit are realized. It's tax revenue a govt has actually earned by investing, so there is even a plausible libertarian case for it.