What is Publishing features? anyway...

Has been working with SharePoint almost 3 years.... still didn't know  what's the mysterious Publishing features - why Microsoft values it so much to not include it in free Shared Services

Here is the "What is the difference between SharePoint Services and SharePoint Server?"

• WSS 3.0
  • Team-Sites and Workspaces
  • Basic Functionality
  • Workflows
• MOSS 2007 Standard
  • User Profiles (My Sites)
  • Portal Sites
  • Enhanced Search including People
  • Single-Sign On
• MOSS 2007 Enterprise
  • Excel Services
  • Business Intelligence Dashboards
  • Internet Publishing and Content Management
  • Web Based Infopath Forms (Users don’t have to have InfoPath to complete business forms)

The book Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Best Practices provides a great chunk of useful information. Here is simple explanation "what's the Publishing Capabilities in SharePoint":

Publishing Capability - Information Others Need to See  - which means "read-only" capabilities such a reading news, browsing pages

Here is an advanced explanation - what the publishing features do
Here is a  tip to figure out what's the publishing feature - just click "add a new site" and go to the tab "Publishing" - it gives a first impression what Microsoft means by Publishing.

And general observation, Microsoft sees SharePoint capabilities in 3 major areas:
1. Publishing - publishing approved content to read
2. Collaboration  - info shared among the Team (edit)
3. Record Management  - info that's kept based on certain retention policy and rules