[ndiddy]

Again I see no purpose in doing things this way besides trying to minimize the amount of people who look at your GPL code for some reason. Isn't it more annoying for the company to make someone in customer support read paper letters, burn the GPL package onto a CD-R, and mail it than it is to simply host the GPL package for each product on a support site or Github or something and include a link in the product documentation?

[ack_complete]

There's definitely a purpose, it's to obfuscate usage of GPL software and dodgy linkage. There's no other reason for situations like hosting a binary download as a plain download on a website while getting the source requires mailing a check or money order to a UK address.