* Whether the JavaScript is free, as in beer, isn’t something most users care about.
* It isn’t that site owners don’t understand or care. It’s that they want to make money by hoarding analytics from stalking users and everything else is trivial.
The goals of the article aren’t invalid or misplaced though. They just need a slight realignment to match real world concerns.
* Users somewhat care about privacy. Privacy is largely misunderstood and educating users is painful but it’s still more productive than forcing a non-concern.
* Users detest poor performance. Spyware for money is frequently bloated and poorly written swelling bandwidth and CPU usage.
The best solution to this, both technically and from user concerns, is to separate logic from content. If web content were largely without application logic, such as turning off JavaScript, everything gets faster and privacy gets better. If web applications were void of content there are fewer data points to associate and stalk against user concerns. That separation is what GNU should focus upon to achieve their goals of libre JavaScript.