It is still an unregulated industry that is mostly run by thieves and scammers, but one thing we can all be sure of is the availability of endless amounts of mining profitability. It is possible to mine Bitcoin for free by using open-source hardware and software (there is a guide to getting started). To fully understand the Bitcoin mining process, I would highly recommend watching this video from Bitsonline's introduction to Bitcoin mining: http://bitsonline.com/how-to-mine-bitcoin/