Yes, it is literally a free money. However, one of the main reason why these forks are happening is because of the moeny. They continue to use the name bitcoin because it already has a good reputation in the community. Thinking that if a coin has a name or a brand 'bitcoin' on it, people will take a lot of interest in it which will give the developers a lot of money. They can fork any coin but they kept on doing a bitcoin fork. Why? Because of the money that can be earn from its reputation.

It will be great somehow if these fork coins can be of any value in actual and practical means and can be better than bitcoin. But its not.