Caesar I free giveaway in the early 2000s

[MrFlibble]

Apparently back in 1999 and the early 2000s the full version of Caesar was available for a legitimate download from Impressions Games' website. The download link was up until Dec 2002.

I know of at least one other temporary promotional giveaway by Sierra, Red Baron. These giveaways seem to coincide with the time when sequels/updated remakes of respective games were released, and also back in the early 2000s DOS seemed like a platform that would become completely unsupported.

However it would be nice to know for sure if the game can be distributed or not. It is my understanding that currently Red Baron is sold from GOG.com while Caesar isn't commercially available anywhere.

[Edit] Upon the freeware release, Impressions added an installation instructions addendum which says:

PLEASE NOTE:
This program is unsupported. Neither Impressions nor Sierra On-Line will be providing customer service or technical support or this title. On the other hand, you did get it for free.

Which kind of suggests that the game went public domain.

[MrFlibble]

A helpful user in another forum pointed out that Wikipedia mentions Caesar as a game which is no longer freely distributable. This is explained at theLiberated Games forums:

Q: Where is Caesar? Sierra gave it away at one time. Isn't it freeware?

A: When Vivendi Universal Games was contacted about Betrayal at Krondor (see above), the status of Caesar was also requested. Regrettably, just like Betrayal at Krondor, Caesar is not redistributable freeware.

[source]