And here I was thinking this was a misposted thread...
I would applaud the release of such tools for Civ3 but I tend to see this in the context of Freeciv. Meaning, the
source code should be available to anyone interested in improving. This makes a lot of sense for consumer because Firaxis/Infogrames will drop support the moment it becomes commercially unviable. The community would still be able to improve those tools.
But this is a trivial debate, as Firaxis probably couldn't even release the code if they wanted. Too many parties are involved to make this possible.
So why not focus on the real Freeciv instead? That civ community effort is truly open.