> ...and nothing wrong with that. The right-to-repair is mainly aimed at discontinued products anyway, at that point the "IP" is so old it doesn't require protection

What you consider "old" may not be what I, or the manufacturer, consider "old." A lot of embedded development is incremental: you start with an existing codebase and continue building on it to meet new requirements. Occasionally, the entire system is rewritten from scratch, but that is not necessarily the case. Therefore, even software running on a discontinued product may contain code and intellectual property that is still actively used in newer products.

> and to be honest, the whole concept of long term "intellectual property" is bullshit anyway, just as long-term "copyright" - about 3 to 5 years is a reasonable time frame for 'exploiting' a novel idea, after that it should be free for all - at that time your competitors will have figured it out anyway

I believe you are confusing intellectual property and copyright with patents. If that is the case, I would largely agree. I would even go further and argue that many things that are allowed to be patented are ridiculous and not particularly novel at all. Some are so obvious that even a layperson could arrive at the same solution, which arguably should disqualify them from being patented in the first place. This is especially egregious in the standards world, where some companies hold patents on solutions that are intended to be standardized and used globally.

If, however, you are not confusing these terms, then I find your position absolutely ridiculous. It would be akin to asking Microsoft to release the source code for Windows, Office, Teams, Azure (although who wants to see that mess, am I right? lol) simply because "intellectual property" isn't a thing. That would outright destroy countless business models, and I can assure you that no major global or regional regulatory body is going to adopt that position.

> >>there is absolutely no reason why<< access to the same information should be restricted today.

There are plenty of reasons. You simply don't agree with them. That's perfectly fine, but claiming that there is "no reason" for things to work differently from how you want them to is simply ridiculous. Many of them I've mentioned in this post.