I agree, some people would probably complain, no matter what is done. I was actually going to post about the politically correct thing to do... But Honestly, I think anyone that complains about this is pretty nutty. It'll be open source, and it's a free project.

These are just my opinions:
I personally think the best option is to remove passwording in future versions of ZQ- making all the old passworded quests openable without any password input. After all, if this project is open source, why have closed/passworded quests anymore. I think it should be more of an educational thing; look at other people's quests and learn stuff.

I don't think anyone really wants passworded quests, and even if the passwording stuff is left in the source, it's not faux protection. Redundant passwords just makes some users, who know about the source, or certain tools able to remove passwords from quests able to edit older quests, while others don't know about it. If the passwording code is left in, even more tools for editing quests will become available, and there will be users who naively think either their quest is safe, or that some other quest can't be opened- while other users are opening the quests.

I'm thinking ZQ could ignore the password in older quests (like it wasn't there), and then you can save them without the password, still, I'm happy however it's done. I'm even happy if support for older quests is completely eliminated, if people want them, they could just use an older version.

Regardless of how this is handled there will be people who say "I'd rather it this way" or "why isn't it like this"; there will be people who think it could have been done better. Also, important to note, most people who use ZQ/ZC are not scientists, hackers, or programmers, and many of them are young kids. Iit would also be nice if ZQ is all inclusive, without the need for 3rd party tools to edit older or passworded quests.