Thanks John for your post. Let me address your questions:
1) "Open Source for everyone to contribute to": It was available a few weeks ago. I do not recall any significant contributions, and it is verifiable in this same forum.
2) "There are millions of programmers that would gladly tinker with it..." We'd be more than happy to accept contributions from any single one of them :) Just out of curiousity, would you give as a hand at all? (no need to commit to the team)
3) "The forum would surge with discussion on fixing problems and adding features." I disagree from experience. Nothing but requests for support have been posted while source AND install packages were available.
4) "As for "support" problems. It's a "use at your own risk"/FREE product for people to toy and tinker with." We'd love that to be true. It's just not like that in the real world.
5) "Has there been any discussion about doing this?" It has been like that ever since the project became part of DNN.
In the same positive vibe, we have taken actions once again. There is an open call for contributors, we are close to re-releasing the module in a .net 2.0 codebase. But we must ensure no outstanding bugs remain.
I hope this answers your questions, and even more, I hope you are willing to join us and help us reach "full release state".