On your tangential note: I always assumed many in the FLOSS side are actually against most cases of copyright as applied to software, but since it is the regulatory standard, they put a strong emphasis on making it work for their purposes, thus the somewhat ironic “copyleft”.
It’s a “don’t hate the player hate the game” situation for them
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This is definitely the orthodox take. If shared source code was the norm and software wasn't subject to copyright (or really if either of those two conditions were met), there'd be no need for FOSS as an ideology. The purpose of copyleft is to ensure that there's a permanent bulwark against code meant for the commons being co-opted by proprietary software vendors and having changes walled off from the community who created the software in the first place.
Source code is essential to FOSS, a public domain binary-only copy of Microsoft Windows definitely would not be FOSS. This is the second item of the open source definition.
Sure, that is a useful condition and is a no brainer to add if you need leverage copyright anyway.
But would it be enough to spur the open source movement on its own if you could legally decompile all binaries and redistribute that? Probably not.
Its not like source vs. binary is a clear distinction - between code obfuscation, generated code, transpilation, etc. there is a lot of wiggle room what should or should not be OK.
The GPL makes it a pretty clear distinction, "preferred form for modification" is pretty clear, but decided on a case-by-case basis. Obfuscated code is not source, generated code is not source, transpilation is often not source but could be depending on how you use it afterwards, bitmap images are often not source but they can be, executables are usually not source but could be, videos are not source but could be. Some links discussing what source is here:
https://www.inventati.org/frx/essays/softfrdm/whatissource.h... https://b.mtjm.eu/source-code-data-fonts-free-distros.html https://wiki.freedesktop.org/www/Games/Upstream/#source https://compliance.guide/pristine https://opengameart.org/forumtopic/source-required-for-art-l... https://wiki.debian.org/rly-free-software
People on the FLOSS side are for software freedom, copyleft is just one of the tools we can use within the current regulatory framework of copyright. If copyright ever went away, we would have to use different tools but would have different opportunities too.
Those people these days are a vanishing minority. This is not the early-00s anymore.
The reality is that, nowadays, the overwhelming majority of developers touches FOSS code every day and just assumes they're entitled to use it as they see fit. The folks that came up with "copyleft" or care about licenses, are very much not in the driving seat. Blame FAANGs and their hatred for GPL.