Copyleft is an abuse of copyright to pervert its intention. Copyright's intent was that you could not copy things freely, and copyleft is to ensure you can.

If there is no copyright, then you can copy things freely.

All that we need after that to realize the GPL ideal is to legally mandate that people have a right to access and modify source code of software/hardware they use, i.e. the government needs to mandate that Apple releases the iOS kernel and source code and that iPhones can be unlocked and custom kernels flashed, that John Deere must provide the tractor's source code, that my fridge releases its GPL-violating linux patches, etc etc.

You have the right to free speech, the right to a lawyer, and the right to source code. Simply amend the bill of rights.

The open source world would still exist if everything was public domain. It would be smaller because nobody would be forced to contribute but the dirty secret of GPL is that forced contribution virtually never happened anyway.

[dead]