I was recently looking into getting an eGPU for my laptop… boy did I pick the wrong time to try

In my opinion, the differences between “copyleft” (by which I think you mean free, as in the FSF standard) and “open source” is not so cut-and-dry good vs bad. For instance, many libre culture enthusiasts have their reasons for using more permissive licenses (MIT, Public Domain, etc) or more restrictive ones (like the Peer Production License), neither of which meet the FSF standard.