The "non robust strategy" refers to relying on goodnatured monopolies to fund free technologies, not a format being free. When it works its nice, but I am indeed old enough to remember the GIF patent wars, which means I'm also old enough to remember when the big rich monopoly in town was Microsoft (and before them, IBM). Neither Microsoft nor Apple were like Google and the tech they produced was much more closed than MPEG. The idea that MPEG took away some Stallmanist idyll is just ahistorical.