One could really argue whether everything else (giving away something for free without any directly obvious advantage) would maybe be labelled as PR, instead.

But the bottom line is, even in the commercial world there's instalments of free giveaways, even if those are most probably not just made to get a fuzzy feeling...

And I can't seem to find the proposed lack in efficiency and variety with such free investments/PR items as for example Acrobat Reader, Cisco VPN client or the various free-for-personal-use software packages - each of which have the ulterior motive of luring in paying customers, but are free, nonetheless.