This is a laudable goal, but I'm having a great deal of difficulty figuring out how you can say it's still your goal when there's been so little progress towards achieving it. We're coming up on October now, cataclysm launches in the holiday window, and the vast majority of trees have zero points free. Every single one must be invested into core role talents.

Are we missing a "magic" beta patch that fixes it all? Or do we just have different definitions of utility?

All of these are from a PvE perspective. This means that a talent that grants 0.1% DPS (or tanking, or healing) is mandatory over one that offers 0 core role benefit in favor of non-raid utility or fun. If you disagree with that, you have a disconnect with the way people play this game.

Note that I'm only covering the primary tree, not subspecs. There may be free points in subspecs.

One major goal of the cataclysm talent revamp was to provide players with choices, to eliminate cookie-cutter builds. If that was the goal, it's failed. Of the 13 specs I spotchecked before I got overly bored, only combat rogues are anywhere close to where they should be-- and they only have 4 points free out of 31. Not a great deal of choice there, and they're the best of the lot.

Summary/TLDR:
Unholy DK - 0 Fun/Utility Talents free
Frost DK - 0 Fun/Utility Talents free, 32 points required
Blood DK - 0 Fun/Utility Talents free
Ret Paladin - 2 Fun/Utility Talents free
Prot Paladin - 0 Fun/Utility Talents free
Enhance Shaman - 0 Fun/Utility Talents free
Resto Shaman - 1 Fun/Utility Talents free
Combat Rogue - 4 Fun/Utility Talents free
Shadow Priest - 0 Fun/Utility Talents free
Feral (Cat) Druid - 0 Fun/Utility Talents free, 32 points required
Feral (Bear) Druid - 0 Fun/Utility Talents free, 38 points required (my reasoning is below)
Marks Hunter - 0 Fun/Utility Talents free, 32 points required
Survival Hunter - 2 Fun/Utility Talents free, 32 points required

Unholy DK - No fun/utility (FU) talent points free, 31 points required
T1, T3, T6, T7 - No free points.
T2 - 1 slack point, must be invested in a PvP talent 100% worthless for PvE DPS. PvP != fun/utility.
T4 - No free points. 1st point in magic suppression here is a DPS gain, not a FU talent.
T5 - No free points. 2nd point in magic supression is a DPS gain. (Note that this assumes you want unholy to use unholy presence, with 2 points in imp. unholy presence. Currently in beta unholy spec will skip it, and have 2 points here, 1 of which will go to the 3rd point in magic supression and one actually free for FU.

Frost DK - No FU talent points free, 32 points required
T1, T2, T7 - No free points.
T3, T4 - Not only are there no FU talents, but frost has 7 mandatory DPS points at both of these tiers
T5, T6 - 2 free points for FU in each tier, but these are used in T3 and T4 for mandatory DPS

Blood DK - No FU talent points free, 31 points required.
T1 - No free points. Choice between a solo talent like butchery and bladed armor is a no-brainer.
T2, T4, T5, T6, T7 - No free points.
T3 - No free points. 6 mandatory tanking talents this tier.

Ret Paladin - 2 FU talent points free. 31 points required.
T1, T3 - No free points.
T2 - No free points. (Everybody will put the 2 points into pursuit of justice as it is an indirect raid DPS improvement in any fight with any movement.)
T4 - No free points. 6 mandatory DPS points this tier.
T5 - No free points. Repentence is utility, but it's likely to be mandatory utility. The 2 free points will be invested into long arm of the law as movement speed is important for movement fights.
T6 - 2 FU talents. Finally!
T7 - No free points.

Prot Paladin - 0 FU talent points free, 31 points required
T1, T2, T4, T5, T6, T7 - No FU talents
T3 - No free points. 6 mandatory tanking talents this tier.

Enhance Shaman - 0 FU talent points free, 31 points required.
T1, T4, T6, T7 - No FU talents
T2 - No free points. 6 mandatory DPS points this tier.
T3 - 1 free point, but will go to runspeed as it's a DPS increase on movement fights. Not a choice.
T5 - 2 free points, 1 of which goes to the second point in runspeed. The second will go to improved shields. It's a very small DPS increase as it's a terrible talent, but it's not zero.

Resto Shaman - 1 FU talent point free, 31 points required
T1, T3 - No free points, 6 mandatory healing points these tiers.
T2 - No free points. Assuming focused insight will be mandatory.
T4 - Would be 2 free points, but they are consumed by tiers 1 and 3 taking 6 points apeice.
T5 - 1 free point!
T6, T7 - No free points.

Combat Rogue - 4 FU talent points free, 31 points required
T1 - No free points, 6 mandatory DPS talents this tier
T2, T6, T7 - No free points
T3 - Would be 1 free, but it's used in T1
T4 - 2 free points!
T5 - 2 free points!

Shadow Priest - 0 FU talent points free, 31 points required
T1, T4, T6, T7 - No free points
T2 - No free points, and 7 mandatory DPS talents this tier.
T3 - Would be 2 free points, but they're used in T2.
T5 - Would be 2 free points, but they go into veiled shadows in T1 for a DPS increase

Feral (Cat) Druid - 0 FU talent points free, 32 points required
T1, T2 - No free points. 7 mandatory DPS talents these tiers.
T3 - No free points. Assuming only 1 point in stampede is required for cat DPS.
T4 - Would be 2 free points, but we're 4 ahead, so they're used in T1.
T5 - Would be 1 free point, but we're 2 ahead, so it goes into T2.
T6, T7 - No free points.

Feral (Bear) Druid - 0 FU talent points free, 38 points required.
(Bear is kind of an outlier. It has a lot of DPS talents, and it's unknown how important threat will be in cataclysm raiding. It will certainly be more important than WOTLK, however, so I noted them as mandatory.)
T1, T7 - No free points
T2, T3 - No free points, and NINE mandatory tanking talents these tiers.
T4 - Would be 2 free points, but we're 8 ahead, so they go into T2.
T5 - No free points, and 7 mandatory tanking talents this tier.
T6 - Would be 1 free point, but we're 9 ahead, so they go into T2.

Marks Hunter - 0 FU talent points free, 32 points required.
T1, T4, T7 - No free points
T2 - No free points. 7 DPS points this tier.
T3 - Would be 1 free point, but it's used in T2.
T5 - No free points. 6 DPS points this tier.
T6 - Would be 1 free point, but it's used in T2.

Survival Hunter - 2 FU talent points free, 32 points required
T1, T3, T4, T6, T7 - No free points
T2 - 2 free points!
T5 - No free points. 6 mandatory DPS talents this tier.

I appreciate all the work the OP put into that post, but you have to look at your definition of "mandatory." You're taking several talents with no +damage benefit and calling them dps talents because they may lead to higher dps. But under that argument even +health talents are dps because you're likely to do higher dps when you're alive.

My personal philosophy, as I have expressed before, is that the community tends to be over-obsessed with cookie cutter builds. It's somewhat understandable because the WoW community has evolved in a direction where being badly informed is worse than being a bad player. We're all very quick to judge each other based on litmus tests, such as gear scores, achievements, or proper talent builds, that likely don't measure performance half as well as we want them to.

Even many of the so called cookie cutter builds today are honest about those talents that are a toss up. Picking talent A over talent B may be a theoretical dps benefit in the sims or even for the author of the cookie cutter build, but that doesn't mean it will work for you. I have deviated from these sacred builds often on my own characters because I found that I don't rely on certain abilities or mechanics as much as the build assumes I should. Now maybe my dps (healing, etc.) would improve if I could manage to do that, but in the interim using a build that is bad for me just because it's the anointed one doesn't make sense. A- dps with the "bad" build is superior to C+ dps with the "good" build.

If it's a talent that provides a 10% dps increase or offers an ability you'll use constantly, fine. It's hard to argue that won't benefit most players. But when I see players obsess over talents that provide a theoretical 1% dps increase that is vastly overshadowed by the noise of their own performance, I shake my head a bit. Want to see what I mean? Compare a parse of yours on the same boss from week to week. You'll probably see a dps variance of 5-10% or more. That's the role of your skill, latency, bad luck, lacking the perfect raid comp or whatever else. Worrying about that 1% dps talent was a rounding error. Let's not forget that what may be 1% on one boss probably is not on another.

Finally, getting back to a "mandatory" talent, consider what you'd call a talent that wasn't mandatory. You'd probably call it junk, the way many of you dismiss the "PvP talents." If a talent is useful, then it becomes mandatory. If it's not useful, it's dismissed. That narrow sweet spot in the middle where a talent is truly optional is held to be very, very narrow indeed by many in the community.