Pulling the game off sites like FilePlanet is a lose/lose for customers and GOG imo. The way they handled BASS likely brought in paying customers and it certainly created goodwill. Either way, that was a much better method to handle a similar situation.
Besides, vocal minorities create great word of mouth with just a few people - that's what they do.

Well, if the game isn't freeware any more, then offering it for free is illegal. I think most people would understand that, even if most of us prefer to get things for free instead of paying for them.
Remember that Mad Otter Games bought this IP for good money, and then they (probably) paid even more to get hold of the original source code. So the process that lead to the games being available here was far from free. Unlike with BASS, for example.
We can probably assume that Mad Otter Games bought the IP for other reasons than to simply offer the games here on GOG - they probably have a sequel in mind. But they're a small independent developer, and any income is good income. So it's understandable if they do whatever they can to make sure people buy the game here instead of downloading a free version that's no longer legal in the first place.

I don't think that anybody would buy rights to the free game. Especially the company that suppose to make money, not to spend one :]

Understandable? Perhaps.
Good business desiscion? No.
You cannot force people to download something for money, after it was available for free. Heck, you can't force people to pay for something, which wasn't free at all. You know, people do NOT care, if some information on the internet is legal or not. They just download it. And there's nothing, you can do about it ...
All they do is ... aquire the rights to THEIR old games and put them on GOG.com, so that people might (!) want to buy them, if they want to. The only thing, they can do, in collaboration with GOG, is make their game package as attractive as possible. Which they did with "The Incredible Machine" :)

Well, the fact is that all games on GOG are available somewhere for free. Not legally, but on pirate & abandonware sites. That's just how it is. GOG relies on there being enough people willing to pay for these games, even though they're old, and even though they can be found on the web for free. So there's nothing new here.

But you can get both from legal sites. As example, you can grab Red Baron 3D in germany from the homepage of the biggest computer magazine here. Both games were released for free to promote something: Red Baron 1 for Red Baron 2 and Red Baron 3D for the movie. This promotions worked so well that you can find both today on many well known and legal sites, also listed in special articles about free computer games.
So how will you tell the people to buy something again when everywhere stands that it is free because of promotion? As seller or distributor you can only be the bad guy for the publicity. I believe the only way to sell this games again is to make them special, as example by special content or services (soundracks, new programs, compatibility with new OSs). This is the right way and this is the way gog goes.
I think we wouldn't talk much about this when gog could sell it for 6€, because in my eyes it would be a fair price for the specials (mission builder) and the service (compatibility, easy install, support, etc.) you can get. Maybe the distributor will see this also and the price will fall someday.

You don't :)
You just make your offer, you advertise it and hope, that enough people are willing to buy your offer, because its attractive enough. You cannot control "the internets" to remove all freeware hostings or update all information. You simply cannot!Yes. Thats the risk, you have to take, if you offer something for a price, which was (as a whole or as a part) free before or is STILL free.
Exactly! Expand your offer. Add something, which might be of interest to the potential buyer.

I think it's a grey-area, and that's the problem. As far as I remember there was nothing about a time limitation on the Sierra site. This site is gone now and I don't know If Sierra allowed others like computer magazines to offer this games on their pages for download. If they allowed them without any restrictions, as example they say nothing special on their site for cases like this (like don't publish it elsewhere or it's only free for the short time of promotion), we are in a grey area.

I already have Il-Sturnovik, doubt I will ever need another flight sim!

The BASS and Red Baron situations are not similar at all. BASS is available for free everywhere, including GOG, and has been for years. Red Baron is available for free everywhere except GOG. While it might engender more "goodwill" if GOG and Mad Otter were to allow those free versions to continue, it would certainly hurt the sales of RB, which does not help GOG or Mad Otter (especially Mad Otter) at all. Plus, there is the distinct possibility that all these sites that still offer the free game are actually doing so illegally, though in their defense, they are very likely ignorant of that fact. Even if Mad Otter and GOG are OK right now with the free version existing, if those sites were to continue offering it, they could open themselves up to future litigation which most of them will likely want to avoid.
http://www.madottergames.com/
Check the news item from September 8th:
"Mad Otter Games is very proud to announce that it has acquired all rights to Red Baron, Red Baron II, and Red Baron 3D."

AFAIK, they are still offering a "bounty" for the source code to the games. They did buy the rights, but no one seems to know where the source is, so they are offering $1500 to the first person who can produce the complete source for any of the games.

If GOG were actively going out of their way to try to get any freeware release pulled you might have a point. But that's not what's being discussed; rather, the initial suggestion was simply that GOG contact the copyright holder to ensure that they're aware of the freeware release and the potential confusion it may create, so that the copyright holder can address the matter as they see fit.
Or they simply come across as a batshit crazy fringe group. It depends largely on how reasonable their position seems to the rest of the folks out there.

This is tempting...but why would I want to get this over the much more recent Rise of Flight for a WWI-era combat flight sim fix, may I ask?

I am really keen to buy this for RBII 3D but am wary of the image quality on DirectX as I had this years ago and the DirectX compatible game looked terrible.
Any one got some screen shots and what screen resolutions are supported and is this done in Window mode?
Cheers,
Darth Teddy Bear

For the immersion.
RoF is from all reading an excellent flight sim, but it has no content. RoF's career mode makes IL2's canned missions where you never really die and just refly them over and over till you succeed seem interesting.
I cannot understand how no-one seems to understand how RBII 3D set the world on fire to such an extent it was being played 10 years or more later and the the only reason it is not being played now is compatibility.
Cheers,
Darth Teddy Bear

For me, the debate over whether or not Red Baron (or any other game) is freeware elsewhere on the net is not relevant AT ALL; although Red Baron (and quite a few of the older older GoG titles, actually) and its sequels have been available for free for quite some time elsewhere on the net, these are the first releases I've been able to play on my computer because of the extensive graphic setup options thrown in by GoG with their launchers / installer. I have happily paid and will continue to pay 5 or 10 dollars for their sort of "deluxe" versions with pdf docs and ultra-compatibility (I can get all of their games to work on MAC OSX as well)!! GoG is providing a great service to us retro-gamers indeed at a ridiculously low price, and I hope they continue to do so.