But I think that an open-source release of Unreal Engine 1 that could potentially give us the power to fix these issues, would be great. The final thing that Deus Ex needs before becoming perfect is an open-source engine (kinda like OpenMW).
It'd also let us mod things way beyond what's reasonably possible by default, port the thing to other CPU architectures, port to other OSes..
I'm quite disappointed that the games industry at large doesn't care about their customers enough to open source their code.
You're right though, it's a pity this doesn't happen more often. As we've seen with Quake and classic DOOM, it doesn't even have to amount to a giveaway, as the game assets can remain payware.