I am not claiming in any way that the problem we face in HW design are the same as the SW folks do. I most certainly agree that RTL is but a small chunk of the overall effort of designing a chip. But I am afraid my point that this chunk is in a terrible place still stands.
Your second point was that HW engineers haven’t learned about sharing—as evidenced by the fact that they use a different term for it than SW does.
Again this is evaluating HW through a SW prism. Where’s github for bridge designers? rocket scientists? brain surgeons?
HW engineers share info in pretty much the same way that every other industry in the world does (except SW). The concepts are made available through patents, conferences, journals, and press releases. More detailed info is often made available through purchaseable IP.
Maybe it could be better, but there are good reasons that HW IP can’t be shared as easily as SW source code.
You have also entirely ignored my second point :)