What they are not willing to sell is the source code. This is
due to security issues with the COH source code and other NC Soft games that
use the same launcher and account management.
Nah, NCSoft doesn't want to sell the source code because NCSoft simply doesn't part with source code. Ever. It's one of those company policies from on high that everybody who works there knows, has been there since the very beginning, and no one dares question.
If they're saying it's for security reasons or whatever, that's just a convenient smokescreen. I have it on very good authority that the only part of the code that is even remotely connected with NCSoft is the authentication module (since it's based on the Lineage II auth code), and that's something that could be easily ripped out and replaced with a different protocol as it was bolted on at NCSoft's request after the rest of the game was completed.
And if that's what they're worried about, well, that's really silly since the auth protocol is the very
first thing that was reverse engineered years ago, and there's at least 3 independent implementations of it in the wild that I know about, probably more. Not only in Lineage II emulators, but in SEGS and Woofers (well, an incomplete version in the latter that uses the wrong hash), and I've also published some documentation on the protocol. People already know all about its hardcoded Blowfish encryption key ( [;'.]94-31==-%&@!^+] ) and the bare RSA key that is wide open to man-in-the-middle exploits. They wouldn't be hiding anything that way.
The store is all Playspan and has nothing to do with NCSoft. I know at least one programmer from Paragon who was bitching about having to write the interface to it; it's not something that was given to them.
But the whole "security reasons" is just community speculation anyway. AFAIK the negotiating team hasn't been provided with a reason, simply, "No, we are not going to offer that under any circumstances."