WotC putting their back catalog up as PDFs is a pretty big indicator of how they're treating this edition, almost as much as how the edition itself feels in the current playtest. They're paying a lot of respect to older fans while still trying to make the game accessible to new players.
And that's the important thing: Paying respect. A LOT of players who jumped ship during 4e era did so because they felt the game had moved too far from what they felt D&D was, and that WotC wasn't paying respect to the material. Do they need to go to Ed Greenwood or Keith Baker? No. They own the IP, straight up. They can do whatever they want with it. Same for Dragonlance, Ravenloft, Dark Sun, and every other campaign setting outside the stuff like Star Wars or Wheel of Time that they licensed back in the 3rd Ed era.
What they're doing by bringing back the original creators to work on these settings - even if it's just in a consultation role - is getting validation for the new system. "You didn't like what we did in 4e? I'm sorry, we learned our lesson. Ed Greenwood himself is writing the new novel to fix it. We're also doing this huge open playtest to make sure we get the core system much closer to D&D's original roots. And we're starting to sell all our old back catalog you used to have to spend a lot of time searching for then paying outrageous collectible prices to get. We cool now?"
I don't need to be convinced that they respect me, or whatever, but this approach is my tentative assumption about, at least in part, their modus operandi, and that its good MO is one of the few reasons I'm curious to see how this all goes
I don't know what settings they will or won't do. I agree that it might be a better idea if they don't. I used to spend ridiculous hours trawling for GH and FR material online to somehow try to peice together some sort of campaign because I wanted to be a part of that shared experience. Some lessons I learned included that some of the underlying concepts (tm) were so grating I'd need to change it all anyway, and that any man-handling of a new product for a given world (besides, perhaps, Ebberron, which it could be argued that new products were still producing a baseline product) was recieved in board-wide anger.
I missed the boat on the most radical changes to GH, I guess, but having seen what happened with FR, if I were deeply invested in that setting, I may have been quite upset at the changes wrought. But when I think about it, what is the alternative? Any change would have met with dissaproval. Not changing the product, then what would they be selling (and would this unchanged product be met with approval?) I've seen people argue that they grew out of a setting and moved on, or got bored of it, so anyone handling this or that product would have to be faced with making a product that was both relevant and vital, and would still sell.
To make the older stuff accessible to me seems like the best plan. those who care can obtain the stuff, and it doesnt have to be modified to be relevant or meet marketing pressure. New gamers can access it if they are intrigued, though most wont be, because it follows an older paradigm, ones originally inspired by a kind of action, emotion and imagination portrayed in old pulp stories (GH) or high fantasy (FR), and later dragonlance and other things.
Newer gamers are inspired by things that their culture and experiences are piqued by. Not just video games, but relevent movies, world events, new mythologies and ideologies, hell day-to-day lives. Their want to express their emotional and creative responces to these things need new tools and new paradigms; tools and paradigms that can't sell need to be forgotten or changed; can our favourite settings retain their old qualities while still appealing to new niches? So far, it doesn't look like it!
I really like the idea of kender. Ive never played warforged, but they look cool. I hope they remain.