You are running into the same problem I ran into.
I think that people will start playing the game again once they realize that their is no viable alternative. The loss of the PBW site was a catastrophic blow to the remnants of this community. The loss of all that data, games, downloads, members, etc is just to insurmountable to recover from. Yet, if SFI will would release the source code for SE IV, beings how they own the rights, a short lived revival would be had and who knows, perhaps even a complete resuscitation of interest in this game could be sparked with new innovations and such.