Generally, Paizo doesn't let other companies use its IP for free. If you see another company making products with our properties, it's a safe bet to assume there's a licensing deal in place.
given that the material is all freely available online or through PCGen, that's a lot to pay for what amounts to a bit more convenience in character creation
Not quite all of the material. Any references to names of locations/people/gods in the Golarion setting, for example, have to be removed if you're using the OGL. That's one of the reasons the Hero Lab creators presumably paid for official Pathfinder licensing. Oh, and being able to mention the name "Pathfinder" itself (in order to claim their product works with it), as that isn't covered by the OGL and the Pathfinder Compatibility License doesn't work with software.
The price of the product itself is probably something you're better off directly contacting the software creators about, I doubt Paizo have any say in the matter. Presumably they've got it priced at whatever they believe makes them the most overall profit out of the units sold/price per unit equation.
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You can buy the basic Hero Lab package and enter the data you need yourself for free, or you can buy add-on packages only when you need something from that package (to spread out the cost over time). Nothing forces you to buy all the data at once (or at all) except your own desire to have it all readily available.
Owning the books shouldn't factor in to the equation on whether or not to own the data packages. One doesn't have anything to do with the other. After all, the game information is freely available online in several places (and there are free alternatives to Hero Lab, such as PCGen).
-Skeld
What Skeld said. When buying data packages you're basically buying the time and effort of the LWD staff who input the data and have thus saved you the effort of doing it yourself. But if you want it for free, you could do it yourself. LWD charge very reasonable rates considering they get books out on basically the same schedule that Paizo do, and have to pay that license fee.
Always vote with your wallet.
Ryan Dancey posted something like this a long time ago that has stuck with me:
You don't worry when people complain about price. You worry when people stop buying.
On the "Paizo making their character creator themselves" issue. If you don't already have people in-house that know this, you need to create a dept to do this and hire people that can do this competently. But this is a niche market of a niche market so why NOT use another company (or the open source community, of which PCGen is a part of) do this to support your main source of income.
Creating a character generator in the first place is a fairly complex order, keeping said generator up to date with all the exceptions that EVERY new book makes is really a pain. We at PCGen know this with excruciating detail. :)
And as signatories of the Community Use Policy PCGen is available to utilize everything that Paizo puts in their Approved Product List. Lone Wolf Development has a license with Paizo, and I am sure getting a decent amount out each sale of datasets for the Paizo books.
