The future of Companion may be a dead end, but until someone makes some progress with Studio, that is a moot point. Who knows if Omni will get anywhere, but at least he is has made some attempts to get things started. Putting it on SVN should encourage others. If you can add to his efforts, by all means, please do so. Any contributions would be appreciated.
One thing that you have to give Brian credit for is that he opened the source for Studio VGA when he realized that he was not going to do anything more with it. Too bad troflip is not around to open up Companion.