My point was that Fallout was explicitly time limited. C&C wasn't. EA don't seem to have withdrawn it either, they just seem to have rearranged their site and not bothered to put the links back.
Well, whether that's true depends on the exact details of their release; which is something I mentioned earlier. I can't track down the original pages though, I'll see if I can find anything in my discs.

That's generally how that works. Ultima IV is free, but only if you download from somebody authorized to provide the downloads. Anybody else providing it and it's technically pirating the game.

What would make it different is if EA placed the game into the Public Domain, any copies that they placed into the public domain would always be in the public domain.

The whole BS of taking PD works and putting them back under protection is something that just risks losing works to non-ownership.

Dont confuse freeware with abandonware with open source. AFAIK the legal status of Red Alert and Tiberian Sun is kinda ambigious. EA released RA as part of a marketing campaign for IdontrememberwhatC&Cgame, and the download links were available for a time on their website.

Now, the website with links is no more, BUT the files itself are still hosted on EA servers. If you know that address, you can still download and play the game.

That however does not mean that their legal status has been changed. I remember no announcement about the games becoming freeware/open source. I got the impression that rather they released the game free for some time, but legally all restrictions still apply - you can't redistribute or modify it.

My guess that RA and TibSun are kinda in the grey zone. It might be that EA just doesn't care about them enough to reasses their legal status.

I got my C&C decade something compilation for about three bucks, new. Someone said that I can get most of these games for free, so I punched him in the mouth. Anyway, the first C&C has a nasty bug in the GDA campaign, you need some special 1.02 patch or something, just to let you know.

most? you sure can't get Generals + expansion, Red Alert 2 + expansion and C&C2 + expansion for free. not legally anyway.

Had those already. The only games I was missing were the free ones. Oh, and Renegade. I basically bought it because of the Renegade.

At least I think Renegade wasn't free... Anyway, it's a nice little compilation, even if you already have most of the games.

Yeah, you just need to google and install Nyergud's C&C patches for TFD pack....

After that, yer laffin!

I downloaded Tiberian Sun on FilePlanet about 2 weeks ago.I think is still freeware

At least for the first one there still is a link on the wikipedia page. That is a strong indication that they are still freeware, They are linking to ea.com

I don't give a damn. They're not avaible for sale, so I download them.

Gimme C&C , and Red alert 1+2, and I will buy it.

They're still there. They're still advertised on the official C&C forums.

http://www.commandandconquer.com/forums/showthread.php?67-Download-Red-Alert-and-Tiberian-Sun

Well, technically, they are - http://store.origin.com/store/ea/en_US/pd/productID.72872200

EDIT: Though as far as I'm aware, C&C, RA1 and TS are still freeware releases anyway. EA didn't withdraw them, they just changed the pages on their own site so they're no longer properly linked to.

Your links guide me to nowhere. Maybe it's not avaible in my region.

No need to post the links, just google "command conquer gold fileplanet" and voilà. They are available to me, so should they be in all of the EU.
So I downloaded it finally, but with all the added pita of getting them to work, it would be great seeing that FD compilation here. Now that we have EA onboard, and having that we're past the 9.99$ psychological barrier, I guess this is more than possible. Hey GOG staff, wink wink nudge nudge anyone?