I would love to see a push for more intellectual ownership over the code you contribute to your employer. I should be able to take any snippet I wrote and reuse it with impunity.

This might require engineers unionizing, but it would be a boon to the field. Patterns buried in closed source vaults would be disseminated and innovation would surge. It might usher in a golden age of software if everyone were able to freely share their intellectual ideas with their peers and not have to worry about risking their health insurance and home in the process.