The first half of the article was good and balanced. I especially like the distinction in lay terms: copyleft to push freedom; non-copyleft to push adoption. That's a great way to describe it to a person contemplating what license to choose. Then, the article goes in a different direction that embodies negative qualities that author critiqued in the related presentation. Let's address a bit of this from my pro-consumer, pro-security/quality, pro-OSS, anti-copyleft perspective. Mentioned that just so my bias is clear upfront and why I push adoption-oriented licenses (esp for open hardware & high assurance).

re stepping stone. Yes, this is the common goal of proprietary use of anti-copyleft software. IIRC, copyleft software got its start using the architecture, languages, tools, and platforms of BSD and proprietary offerings. So, even GPL proponents build on existing work. Anyone wanting an open, free version of a given enhancement can similarly produce it starting with the same stepping stones.

re open to closed. We saw this happen with Apple App Store, the QNX source reversal, attempts to combine open code with DRM, and so on. This is bad. However, it almost exclusively happens with companies whose licensing, TOS's, SLA's, etc allow for this sort of thing. That's where the problem is. Avoiding such companies, selecting safest licenses, and/or ensuring certain conditions are perpetual in contracts/licenses are easiest solution. GPL is actually a successful implementation of my claim, although it wasn't good enough. Affero corrected a major deficiency and more evolutions will probably follow. Many more licensing schemes can happen to reduce negative impact of business participation while empowering users.

The common theme in most gripes is what the companies do. The reason we have this problem is that users almost exclusively do business with scumbag companies. They don't care about terms. They don't care about its ethics. Prior abuses rarely make them change companies (see Microsoft and Facebook). They don't try to leverage their buying power to force (existing) or incentivize (startups) companies to negotiate something that's favorable to them and future-proof in main risk areas. Like the old saying, the only thing that was necessary for triumph of evil was that good people did nothing [while evil kept its eye on the ball and its hands/feet in a sprint].

A lot of these problems can be avoided by simply investing in the right organizations. People who pick up Microsoft's server operating system are in for more schemes than those that used FreeBSD with commercial support. Certain small companies behind IDE's and libraries have had great terms for their users for years with minimal hassles unlike the mess that's Microsoft's development tools. Services provided by non-profits, cooperatives, and companies simply focused on customer satisfaction have done great compared to race to bottom in cost or highest shareholder earnings that get many others scheming on customers. Pick the right people/companies/tools, maintain an out to avoid lock-in (open formats/API's help), and invest in that. Double down on it if they use permissive licenses and re-invest back into their communities.

In the end, this is more a problem of incentives than purely a legal one. People trust companies that don't care about them. They get screwed. Stop doing that. Do plenty more of the opposite. On top of it, explore alternatives [1] to popular source-sharing models in case business opportunities arise. Get momentum going in directions other than companies that do lock-in and lock-down. After all, I've done a lot of business with proprietary companies and have mostly avoided being boxed in. Same goes for FOSS use. Imagine that... All about what you use, how, and from whom. Sacrifices will need to be made, though, and now we're getting back to user demand (incentives) driving the negative practices.

Outside a niche, I don't see it happening because market as a whole won't take responsibility to make it happen. The problems are market's fault, as usual. Good that niche commercial, OSS, and FOSS have given us plenty of good stuff to work with. I encourage all of them to keep at it without a need to fight with any. I avoid GPL strictly for economic reasons: certain investments don't happen, esp high assurance or ASIC development, unless they can recover the cost somehow. Additionally, companies adopting high quality components makes stuff more robust over time. Finally, making money allows them to fight inevitable patent suits that will attempt to put them out of business and create more patents for defensive use. So, for economic reasons, I oppose the GPL in some spaces while respecting it and being neutral in others. My OS is GPL, for instance, and I'm grateful to its developers & community. :)

[1] https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/05/friday_squid_...