OpenSource capitalism

I was in WHSmiths today and saw a £7.50 magazine called "OpenOffice.org" (a one off - like you get now and again).

It had a cover disk with OO on it as well as tutorials and several plugins. And then it had about 25-30 pages of info about OO plus 15 ish pages of advertising / other stuff.

At first I was a bit annoyed that people are milking an open source project for their own gains (quickly replaced with disgruntlement that I hadn't thought of it first!!). Ok so they are writing the tutorials and compiling the disk but that cant cost much (I could write similar content in a couple of days and so could most of us here I should think!). The publishers must be making quite a packet out of it - and it's not as if the info isn't available (probably better written and more concise) online!

But then I thought a bit more and I realised that although it was blatant capitalism it could have a good effect. The mag was aimed at mid level computer users - or active learners - and so was massively raising the profile of OO. This has got to be a good thing right? I mean it basically means an open source piece of software is now marketable / commercial - aka mainstream.

There were 5 mags in the store I was in. Which means Smiths expected to sell at least that many. I've no idea how many WHSmiths stores there are or even if they rolled the mag to all of them (lets assume they did) but there must be a good 10,000 copies potentially to be sold... and that's not accounting for other shops either (well maybe it is! I'm just plucking numbers out of nowhere). Whatever the figures they amount to quite a large number of (potential converts).

Regardless it is a very high profile position to be in (what would happen if a FireFox mag was done??).

Any thoughts? Is it good having free software in a high profile position? Or will it have no real promotion effect and is it just a blatant rip-off money making scheme?