[icedchai]

Ask him to license the code for your new, related venture. Offer to pay him a percentage of revenue for that license. The risk here is the code isn't that great, so you're licensing something you're going to have to replace anyway.

[weusedto]

Yeah I think you nailed it with "licensing something you're going to have to replace anyway." It doesn't make sense to fight/pay for something that may not have any value.

[icedchai]

Yeah, probably not worth wasting your time. Most code, outside of larger orgs with tons of documentation and structure, is worthless without the people who can operate and understand it.