Lastly, although free alternatives are often technically superior to their closed-source competitors, at the end of the day

I am 100% in agreement with you here. While I'm not by any means a Libertarian, I prefer MIT and BSD licenses because they are truely free. The GPL is not: it removes freedoms. Now, you argue that limiting freedom can be a net good - we limit the freedom to rape and murder, and that's good. I don't agree that the freedoms the GPL removes are equivalent, and can indeed be harmful.

I don't mind others using the GPL, but I won't.