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

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).