Pestalence,
Of course there are numerous reasons why they will not release it. There were talks about two years ago about a possibility of it being released and I was checking if anything had change. It also depends a lot on the engine in use. A few great games have released their source code (BOB, Falcon 4, Doom (very old of course), Quake (old too)). There are others but I cannot think of them right now. It is few and far between but lets be honest, I don't think we will ever see Andros, Neo Tholians, PA Panels, etc. etc. the way things are going. IMO, SFC3 was a total butcher of everything that was good. Too dumbed down. Obviously, if the code was released we could add those things ourselves. We would have the ability to add new 2D schematics of the ships also.
I knew it was probably not going to happen but I could hope.
Brad