Since I am not allowed to post in other threads, and I am feeling particularly professorial, you get my soapbox. No apologies offered in advance. I am sure I will be discounted, and, I dont feel like posting my vita again. You can either believe I know what I am talking about or not. Posting will let me sleep tonight

Who WOULD you want to publish a new FS game?
When THQ bought Volition, everyone jumped on the "screw THQ" bandwagon. So at some point, THQ was the devil. Some people hate Microsoft. Others hate EA. Is there anyone anybody likes unilaterally? The answer is no. Nobody has ever made everyone happy.
And a publisher, be it Derek Smart, HLP, Egosoft, or whoever, still needs a team to develop something. Who'd develop it? Those are two entirely different entities (well, most of the time). Publishers distribute and oversee, developers make the bits and bytes work. Publishers deal with boxes and retail shelf space. They often provide logistics and QA support. They also often "Produce" the game, which, as often as not means they get in the way and say "no"

. They are responsible for marketing and sales. And they wirte the checks to the developers.
Whoever acquires the IP has to pay to develop it. Making games is an expensive proposition. MaxGaming has yet to turn a profit, and I know how much it cost us to operate, even part time, in the last 2 years. And that's just operate, let alone pay people appropriately. I have a fair idea how many hours have gone into SCP, and, volunteer work is great, but if you suddenly shell out a half a million dollars for the RIGHTS to build a FS game, you're gonna want these things called deadlines, because that money is wasted if you don't produce something. And believe me, as talented as the SCP team is, we're not well known for our deadline making capability. People who are not paid, generally aren't well known for that. MaxGaming isn't well known for that. You have to pay the rent. Whoever acquires the rights will have to pay more than just the licensing acquisition fee, so that implies paying developers. And getting ex-V guys might not be possible for a number of reasons, not the least of which is we have collectively pissed off at least one key figure.
So. Buy the license. Pay a development team. Hope it sells.
So, who would the publisher be? And then who would actually make the damn thing?
Warning: Speculation-
It seems REALLY likely that Volition has/had a similar right of first refusal to the FS games that Outrage/Parallax has to the Descent Series. After all, the guy who likley engineered the deal with Interplay was 50% of Parallax. That means, they can, effectively block ANY developer from doing a sequel. It b locked Descent 4 (at least that's what Orbital claimed, whether or not Orbital could have executed is another thread). Smart thing for developers to own part of the IP, and these guys seem like they were smart (no pun intended, Derek). My idle speculation is that, the same guy who engineered owning the Descent IP likely built similar clauses into the FreeSpace IP contracts with the same publisher. I would have.