why can't they just release the source to us, so we can spend our time developing new updates for it. Is there a date when that can happen? Maybe in their agreement with whoever is holding the source, there is a point in time when they can release it. Then they wouln'dt have to worry about it.

I can see the pros of this, but what would be the cons? Lots of different versions, that no one can agree on? Broken code outthere that just gets patched by other people?