Someone needs to do an Internet Archive style project on all these repositories, put them up on Github, and make sure that they are indexed properly by search engines (i.e. intro pages become README.md, wikis are migrated, etc.).
Not at all, that's 100% the point of most open source licenses. Which are compulsory for a project on GC.
E.g. MIT:
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to
deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the
rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or
sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in
all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING
FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS
IN THE SOFTWARE.
Specifically, note "Permission is granted" and "distribute".
Comply with those terms (i.e. include that piece of text when you redistribute) and you satisfy MIT.
GPL, &c, they all have similar clauses. In fact, MIT goes much further. I could take all those projects, mirror them, and charge people insane amounts of money for it.
If you can't even rehost on Github, what good would copyleft be?
Not really.
Unlike a lot of other hosting services, Google code required you to pick an open source license for the project.
Even if there are no headers on source, you have a good argument that they were proclaiming to the world it was licensed a certain way, ...
(now, third party code they may have included is a different issue, you can't get rights to that through someone else's claims, but ...)
