Why can't we have open and free games? Why not atleast after commercialization has ended? The current situation feels like stealing from mankinds heritage.
The problem is often that the infrastructure around such open source games is bad/crumbles. Everyone wants to write shiny gamedesign code, nobody wants to work on tools or server-software.
Another issue is, that people who felt the pain, dont have a way of knowing when the pain is fixed. If you could have a github-trigger, as in "send me notification, if the following issues are fixed" and the devs could see that there is a potential crowd waiting - that would be awesome.
The sources for big things like Starcraft and Age of Empires II gives you a monopoly on the new content though, so I understand why publishers keep those hits close to their chest. It's a shame they're not more liberal about the ones they aren't actively keeping up.
I've never played the original, but I'm a huge fan of the HD release and all of it expansions.