Actually, you are missing the point of free software. It's not to provide gratis software, it's to provide free-as-in-freedom software. Richard Stallman has always tried to make the distinction between free-as-in-beer and free-as-in-freedom, and you seem to want to break it down. People have every right to charge for their software, and deserve to be paid if their software is good. If no one bought free software, the free software movement would be unsustainable. Programming is fun, but money provides another incentive to write even better programs.
Also, you say that rights to modify programs can be bought from any company, but you can't find software that costs nothing. Let's take a look at a company almost everyone hates: Micro$oft. They certainly provide some free-as-in-beer software to the public, especially when it bolsters their monopoly. An example is the Visual C++ compiler. What I've never heard of is someone buying the source code to, say, Windows.
Allowing people to get the software for free is one of the many reasons free software can compete with proprietary programs, but that's only a byproduct of the real purpose: to let people actually buy software and do with it as they please, not just a license to use it in the way the author envisioned.
Under the GPL, you can redistribute someone else's program for free or for money. If the artist put his art under the GPL (if he did it in the GIMP, for example, his XCF file could be considered the source), then what Linspire did would have been completely OK.
Though what the artist did is not in keeping with the Free Software movement, Linspire itself isn't either. Look at their EULA; they put many, many restrictions (especially on redistribution) that disagree more with the GPL than the Creative Commons License.
In the end, no one in this case would receive the full blessing of Richard Stallman.
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Also, you say that rights to modify programs can be bought from any company, but you can't find software that costs nothing. Let's take a look at a company almost everyone hates: Micro$oft. They certainly provide some free-as-in-beer software to the public, especially when it bolsters their monopoly. An example is the Visual C++ compiler. What I've never heard of is someone buying the source code to, say, Windows.
Allowing people to get the software for free is one of the many reasons free software can compete with proprietary programs, but that's only a byproduct of the real purpose: to let people actually buy software and do with it as they please, not just a license to use it in the way the author envisioned.
Under the GPL, you can redistribute someone else's program for free or for money. If the artist put his art under the GPL (if he did it in the GIMP, for example, his XCF file could be considered the source), then what Linspire did would have been completely OK. Though what the artist did is not in keeping with the Free Software movement, Linspire itself isn't either. Look at their EULA; they put many, many restrictions (especially on redistribution) that disagree more with the GPL than the Creative Commons License. In the end, no one in this case would receive the full blessing of Richard Stallman.