Thread:Talk:Release Management RFP/Cost v. benefit

I've skimmed Release Management RFP/2014/Mark y Markus LLC just now and I'm having a lot of difficulty understanding why it's appropriate to spend tens of thousands of dollars to make two tarballs. tar is a free Unix program. Announcing the availability of a new tarball via e-mail and IRC is essentially free. MediaWiki is free software. What on earth is all of this money going toward, exactly?