1 The Ad-based model hasn't ever actually worked for anyone on the internet except Google and Yahoo (sort of).
uTorrent's modern clients are as much a service provider as a download client.  It's highly bloated, and that's before the cruft was added.   I switched to qBittorrent a while ago and I'm very pleased with it.
Open Source software is great, but it's only survives if either it provides a business service-side option (i.e. RedHat) or it has a dedicated fanbase that produces college students willing to write code for it.  (i.e. MKV and a lot of the h.264 codecs)   One of the fascinating things about video on the Internet is that most of the "work" was done by about 5 coders.   The ability to produce perfect copies of programs is the true wonder of Internet & Computer technology.

2

In some cases I've seen you're given an opt-out choice, but the wording is deliberately obscure and confusing, giving you a chance of saying "yes" when you meant "no".

3 Pfft.  That's piker stuff, Steven.  One of those--and I think it might be uTorrent--gives you a yes/no "please install this awesome package" radio set, and the no option is grayed out (but it's just colored that way, it's not actually disabled) so you'll think you can't say no.
SF's been wrapping some installers for 2 years now, although there's always a (somewhat hidden) non-wrapped installer.  The thing they're doing now that sucks is they've taken over abandoned accounts like FileZilla and Firefox and are wrapping THOSE installers with adware.

4 It's a plague. Java tries to install the Ask toolbar, even when you're just getting the latest security patches. Download.com tries to install something with every single file.

I had to drop uTorrent for Deluge when I set up my new PC last Christmas.

5 An update to the link confirms uTorrent's claim that it's not a silent install.

6 Even so, it's still a pretty sleazy thing to do.