umm what are you smoking? Infogrames still exists it's the parent company of Atari...
Also 99.9% of devs are absorbed into larger companies so they still exist. Also if the company REALLY dissolves the ownership of the games becomes even more convoluted as they become property of either the designer (if their contract allows that) or sold by the administrator/creditor copyrights have value and as such never truly leave us..

Uhm I'm smoking what I want.No need to be hateful. Everybody is wise-guy these days.
I'm not talking about Profit here. I'm talking about free distribution ;)

You're talking about putting games on GOG - GOG makes money - therefore these games have a for profit orientation. Most, if not all, freeware games have a specific demand that they should not be used for profit purposes (unless an agreement is made). As many people have said many times, freeware does not mean free-to-distribute-however-the-hell-you-want.

But freeware doesn't mean 'free to dstribute', but simply that is free (as in 'free beer'), i.e. it doesn't cost money.
Freeware isn't the same thing as public domain.

It's not so simple. If GOG is a business, even by distributing some games for free, like Elders Scrolls: Daggerfall, they make much publicity, and bring potentially customers. It might be treated like making profit by court, actually.

Profit by association?

Seriously speaking, I have to agree with keeveek's statement since freeware is different on the user end and a company end.

I think people in the thread need to clarify if they're talking about morality or legality. Games that are 'abandoned' aren't legally okay to download. I'm also wondering where the Gabriel Knight devs have said they're abandonware. Last time I checked, Jane Jensen was extremely happy that they were being sold again.

Profit by free advertising and public exposure. If GOG would host a freeware games without consent, I would handle the case, easy money. Actually, it would be so "legally stupid" that the lawfirm that is advising GOG would be liabel.

Whenever you make a profit of somebody else work, you better have a legal agreement with that person.
The devs usually also don't have the power to "abandon" the rights, because they made the game for a company. Even if the dev holds some of the copyrights (like name, character, story) they usually don't hold all the rights of the game.

Morality is the only one worth talking about.

Not when people are discussing GOG releasing them for free distribution, though.

Well GOG don't release anadonware and never will, so I thought we were spinning into more sensible discussion.

That's mainly because it stops being abandonware (replace word with "legally unavailable software" if you wish, though I think of it as redundant) when legal availability becomes an option.

Indeed.

And if the software can be released officially, why wouldn't the publisher charge for it? Abandonware is stuff they either can't re-release because of licensing shit or don't want to bother messing with because the profit margins are so small. Arranging something with GOG goes against both of those.

Abandonware is a coined term, and has no legal definition. One man's "abandonware" is another man's "warez."

You're the first person to ever say this. None of us knew this before.

Thank God you came along.