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I think this quote from the article is what is all qbout. "In Shane's talk last night, he argued against copyleft because software licenses should have "no strings attached". But the very strategy that is advocated above is all about attaching strings! Copyleft's strings say "you can use my stuff, as long as you give back what you make from it". But the proprietary differentiation strategy's strings say "I will use your stuff, and then add terms which forbid you to ever share or modify the things I build on top of it." Don't be fooled: both attach strings. But which strings are worse?"

> So for the average user - GPL has encouraged loss of user freedom

This is ridiculous i encourage you to remember the state of affaires before gpl. User freedom wasn't even on the map. It changed everything and overall the users gained a lot. Also you should remember that gpl freedom is an ethical question. And as allways if there is an infection the medicine could make the parasites react against it.

As far as i know Apache License, Version 2.0 is considered a free software license. To quote from gnu.org "This is a free software license, compatible with version 3 of the GNU GPL." source: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html

Exactly linux distributions have had app stores for ages which have a lot of freedom. And then there are things like the arch user repository which is even less controlled and also great.

You should think what malware is. Maybe apple software is malware as well. Anyways if you could review the source code of the "malware" you (or people who can read it)could know what it does in advance and avoid it. And code could be signed and verified and still be free software. Linux distros verify software signatures and have almost no malware problems and at the same time use a lot of free software. So free software makes users more secure if anything.