I agree with letishaquantez 100%. It doesn't matter to me if the game is available for free. I'm paying the ten dollars for the convenience of having the games neatly packaged in its own installer, which make compatibility a cinch.
I've actually bought multiple games from GOG that I have actual copies of, like Under a Killing Moon, because I simpy don't want to go through the hassle of installing the game and tinkering to get it working.

Compatibility would be a selling point, if it wasn't for the fact that the freeware RB games already work fine "out of the box", no real tweaking required. Pretty much the only thing they lack is GOG's installer GUI, which is not really much of a selling point, as nice as it is.

oi oi....i swear i hate vista..and i know get a mac blah blah. either way i will be happy once i get the game working past the first second of the opening video. sigh. i want to play this again so bad, i remember playing it when i was little my dad brought it home and i was so in love with it, i STILL remember the creaks my plane made when i over did the G's. and the hope of fighting Richthofen himself in campaign that alone kept me fighting to survive every mission. now hopefully reinstalling the game will help with the intro video problem..if not i am not gonna be happy.
anyway, thanks gog, you saved me the trouble of looking and while i don't agree with the price im just happy to have my old fav again. if i can get it to work that is...

Ah, so it's basically WWI-era Falcon 4.0 as far as the singleplayer campaign is concerned? Or is it not dynamic, but still exciting overall? (Speaking of which, what the hell happened to dynamic campaigns in general, anyway?)
It's a compelling reason, yes, and I wouldn't mind the old graphics.
However, there is one little thing I absolutely cannot go without when it comes to flight sims...and that is TrackIR support. I seriously can't go back to mucking with a hat switch for views now.

Sort of. I don't think the flight modelling is at the same level as F4's (although it's pretty reasonable), but I guess you could say that. The campaign definitely is dynamic, although I think it might be a bit more random than F4's.
As to what happened to dynamic campaigns? I think it was just too hard to increase the fidelity of the simulation and still maintain that kind of campaign complexity into the bargain. They're really hard to do well, and in the modern market, simulations (with the apparent exception of consoles driving sims) are about the hardest games to create, with one of the smallest target audiences wanting to pay for them.
If the RB3D source code shows up, I'd love to see it open-sourced. That would open the door for TrackIR support, and so much more. Red Baron 3D has had simply incredible longevity (the mod work done by certain community members was truly amazing), and it would be fantastic if there was a chance for it to be updated further.
Wait... holy cow. TrackIR is already possible?! I had no idea!
That's awesome.
http://www.naturalpoint.com/trackir/03-enhanced-games/game-red-baron-3d.html
http://video.google.de/videoplay?docid=-3852880656793180202
Thanks, plug_nickel.

Whoa. Between those videos and others that depicted some graphical upgrades, I'm almost sold.
I just need to get cracking on that Strike Force 3D gimbal modification already. Need to find a small metal rod/shaft and some linkages...