Open source is great. I'm a maintainer for a pretty large open-source project, so I'm clearly not opposed to the idea, but it not a solution for something like

Open source is great. I'm a maintainer for a pretty large open-source project, so I'm clearly not opposed to the idea, but it not a solution for something like basic electrical engineering or materials science research. Prizes just don't seem to work that well either. As you say, incentives take many forms. Every form that they take adds to the amount of R&D that gets done, and "we're gonna make a ton of money off this" is responsible for the largest single slice of that pie. When you take away protection for inventors, you practically guarantee that the fruits of their labor will go to the people who already own the big production lines and supply chains. That's a really terrible way to run an innovation economy.