In a way, yes. Some may grow completely desensitized to it, and actually start to enjoy the endless and pointless flamewars, mostly because the discussions tend to degenerate from post number one.
While it's commendable that they want the appropriate people get paid (if that's what you're saying), it's almost impossible to do. You get paid to do a job, even if it's a creative one, and you'll continue to get paid until you quit. Which is actually unfortunate in a way, but difficult to change around. In case of license acquirement, it's a similar thing. The new company has bought/received the rights, and they will start gaining the profits for previous work on it, which is even more unfortunate.
At least here on GoG, they do a service of giving you support for the game and you are insured compatibility for the operating systems mentioned, plus other stuff.

Well, you can say that it's the developer's fault to a certain extent. When they signed their contracts to work on certain games on behalf of a publisher, there must be a clause somewhere that the IP rights are not theirs (or they must transfer their IP rights to the publisher). Legally speaking, it's a fair game since the publisher already paid the devs for the IP rights, and in turn we paid the publishers for games made with that IP.
Yeah, I recognize the current IP laws may be less than ideal; Then again, most anti-GOG people on that forum seem to have a strong ideal of what IP laws and ethics should be, to the point of breaking the law and dissing companies profiting from that law (in this case GOG and the affiliated publishers).

I know, and it is why I like independant developpers, because I know my money will get at them right away if I decide to buy it. It's the rules of the game if you develop for a publisher, as they usualy fund the project in the first place, but even then you often gets rights ending up to people who really have nothing to do with the creation of the game — as it is the case for Hervé Caen. Bah, I still wish I could pirate the game and then send money to the developper.
Which is why Bethesda turned Leonard Boyarski down before they started to develop Fallout 3. He could at least enter Blizzard but I'm not sure that just having the name of a game on your resume will magically open doors.

Exactly, developers get a very big reward from having worked on this games by having something to put on their resume. That is something very important in the games industry more than in any other one.

I'm not saying it will open doors, who knows, maybe Leonard was applying for Janitor, or mayor of the universe?
Maybe they turned him down because the type of game they intended to make was indeed not a fallout game.
but regardless, I believe the reason they turned him down was not because "oh hey, he worked on fallout, let's not hire this guy." but more along the lines of something else.

Is that some kind of Jedi mind trick?

Well, having a 'Fallout' on your resume doesn't mean you can consistently create a masterpiece, though... *glares at Troika and Obsidian*

I can understand people complaining to see a game that was "free" before becoming
available on a store to pay and that publishers like GOG makes what some may call "easy money". I know I may preach mostly among converted but...
II was first quite hostile to the idea but... GOG make the game playable that none needs to make any tweek even if dosbox is an easy stuff for old timers, I doubt it will make casual people happy. They also support games, that's a pretty important because there's theoretically something possible to do if the game can't run properly, they supply the patches that may have been lost/difficult to find, they remove DRMs, supply bonuses when they can even if in some case they're pretty minimum in others they're just awesome.
Finally... come on its not like these games are expensive, most cost you a little bit more than a coffee in my country (yep that's expensive for a coffe) and if you play the greedy money-saver that waits for promos that reduce expense to a state that you're shared with guilt and happiness of having payed such few money to re/discover a game.
Anyway companies trying to make money again out of old games was unavoidable and just a matter of time, but how much money would they claim from these classics ? Old good things have been always overpriced over time because of rarity, but GOG saves the PC gaming from that, practising so low prices and putting efforts into removing DRM that may make some present game actually unplayable nor possible to install in the future. They preserve the gaming patrimony with legal and technical means, all they need is the support and money to keep this task up.

To shine a bit more light on this matter, "abandonware" is not a legally recognized status in most countries (there are some provisions for the more general category of "orphan works" in Canada, but these are pretty limited; the US currently has no such provisions (although a bit of legislation is currently pending in congress), and as far as I'm aware neither does the EU). From a strictly legal standpoint there is no difference between Abandonia hosting a 20 year old game and someone putting up a torrent of a game released in the past 3 months. The reason sites like Abandonia can exist without facing any legal trouble is because in most countries non-commercial copyright infringement is a civil matter, meaning (among other things) that the copyright holder is the one who has to pursue any infringement cases through lawsuits. If the copyright holder has disappeared or couldn't care less about a work then it's unlikely they're going to be launching any lawsuits over someone distributing it. Abandonia pulling games as soon as someone starts doing something commercially with them is at least as much a CYA move as a matter of principle.

I'm sorry I opened a can of worms.

Codex cool points don't apply here.

Hmm, they have a point though. If GOG is requiring sites that previously offered a legal version of a title for free, to stop offering it, I think they have a point. GOG should be overstepping the concept of public domain, either the letter or the spirit of it.

If the game is already legally free (which is not the same as being 'abandoned') to begin with, I think GOG will do the same.

Yeah but abandonware is NOT legal. Not even vaguely. Its usually not prosecuted but it is still piracy
And as catshade points out, GOG has free games

None of the games offered on GOG are public domain. Copyright terms around the world range anywhere from 50 to 150+ years (yeah, it's messed up), so it's rather doubtful that any computer games you've ever played are out of copyright. Now, some games might be released as freeware or under a license that grants much freer distribution rights as opposed to standard copyright (such as GPL or Creative Commons), but as far as I'm aware none of the games offered on GOG fall into either of these categories.
Also, I'm willing to state with near certainty that GOG isn't sending out any kind of takedown notices for games being distributed elsewhere. Rather, if such notices are being send it's likely the publishers that are sending them out. More likely, however, is that abandonware sites are pulling games on their own accord to avoid getting hit with any legal action (as they are committing copyright infringement; they're just betting that the absentee copyright holders aren't going to be coming after them).