I'm not sure where the thoughts on the de WP that GFDL-1.2 is not free
came from specifically, but I suspect that they are thinking solely in
terms of print reuse - not that significant. The most important
downstream use of Commons materiel is electronic anyway, so GFDL-1.2
is as free as Wikipedia at the present.
As for my rationale, I tried to avoid weighing up the template itself
heavily (apart from to see that there are good reasons on both sides).
I've given a more detailed rationale to my decision at
http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Commons:Disputes_noticeboard…
and I think I'm right in saying that most contributors to this thread
who had not participated on COM:DEL, only became aware of it due to my
initial post.
I agree with Bryan's initial post here: misuse of a template should be
dealt with by resolving issues with the users not the template. The
help of de.wp admins to determine what images have been made less free
through this would be beneficial, but that exploit is no reason to
delete in of and as of itself imo.