Silent is a real cool dude. I've interacted with him directly and he's always been helpful.
I assume the code was closed only because it was a bit of a hodge podge he had to clean up. (Well, that and the GTA modding scene is a bit, uh, toxic, to say the least)
I'm currently in a similar position for Black Box NFS games. It's taken me over a year so far and I'm still not fully satisfied to release anything because there's so much code to span over 6 (similar, but different) games.