If you read through a little more of the thread, you'll have the answers to those questions. Firstly, there were no less than three companies holding copyrights on the data in the ROM; one may no longer exist, one is a large corporation that would have no interest in even reading what we have to say, and the last was the one who is aware of this project. That last guy is the one who arguably owns the most important part of the ROM. However, he can't license the entire content of the original ROM, as he doesn't own all of it himself, either. So, legal options for the entire content of the ROM, as originally released, are few to non-existent.
I was personally in touch with the above-mentioned company-owner, and he was relatively receptive to putting some sort of deal together. I had done quite a bit of work getting up to the point of even being ready to ask him, but was met with heavy indifference here, and that was before the stock of the original chips was discovered. It seems that people are thrilled with the idea of it, until you tell them that they will actually have to pay something for it. Many didn't respond at all, some were thrilled with the idea as long as it didn't add anything to the cost, some explicitly said "I don't care", and a few expressed some level of interest. Given the response, I couldn't bring myself to make an arrangement with the guy, for us to spend the time in development and testing, only to find out that almost nobody would want to pay when it was ready. There was a real possibility that he would be insulted and insufficiently compensated, or that I might be left with the majority of the bill for his services. That was enough of a deterrent for me, and I never signed the NDA, nor got into the specific details of how much it might cost or how it would be paid.
Knowing now how the project has progressed, and that people are still making pronouncements about how much it should cost and squabbling over a few dollars, it looks like I made the right decision.
