This I have done - not to the full extent of resurrection into the marketplace,
but to the extent that I (and others !) have recrafted such code
for specific applications.
I did release the new code back to the community in question.
(in public - not in some private email)
[A mathematical data processing visualization project.]
The project is dead - but the code is still used by many,
and has even been stolen and is still worked upon in secret labs.

Code never dies.

And if such code is left available,
it can eventually occur that someone may have an aha moment.
The depth of that moment may be as crude as
"this code fixes an annoying problem with an old hack"
or it could be the moment that launches a new
decentralized networking solution everyone else
thought would need a ground-up engineering effort.

Any FOSS effort is not just a here-and-now benefit.

And the term 'WONTFIX' inspires incredible efforts.