I thought it interesting that the "public software" terminology was floated again. There was some debate in 2016 when Nadia Eghbal brought it up as an alternative to "open source".
https://medium.com/@nayafia/i-hate-the-term-open-source-a65f...
https://medium.com/@nayafia/i-hate-the-term-open-source-a65f...
I'm not familiar enough with the history of the free software movement to participate in the debate as framed by the article (edit: OP's), but I thought the author had a narrow focus on individual freedoms. I always thought of the GPL and related licenses as a useful means of building and safeguarding a type of commons.