ORIGINAL: Peresvet
Discussion in this thread kind of implies that there are plenty of programmers willing to volunteer and write code for TOAW. If this is indeed the case, why stay fixated on TOAW and its copyright legacy? Why don't we just cooperate and create an open-source operational game similar to TOAW from scratch?
I've seen this comment, in different forms, so many times over the years! I'm not saying this to discourage anyone... I think the creation of a new open source engine would be fantastic and if someone has the time and interest I'd strongly encourage them to go for it.
For whatever it is worth (as a pro dev for 20+ years), I'd give an open source operational art of war dev project a 99%+ chance of failure within one month. For folks that have not done this professionally there is a tendency to underestimate the complexity by at least three orders of magnitude. Add volunteers into an open source mix and it gets even more complicated.
[Edit] - By "99% chance of failure" in the last paragraph I mean something different than "99% chance that project ends".
This would be a joyless labor of love slog. Someone with a ton of time, perseverance, and ability is required to work long hours, on difficult code, for no money, in a booming job market for developers.