Just a little bugfixing and a new team can just start straight from 1,5 - 2 year point on and make more development and still be a frontrunner of cryptocoins fairly easy.
Good change to make a breakthrough if you have some money and/or good ideas and maybe some connections to make those bank/business deals happen.
But nobody knows whether silkroad want to sell the code.
He told me that he already sold the code.