1) Not going to happen.

2) A more likely scenario is that Microsoft makes Win3.1 freeware. If they do charge for it, they'll charge more than $6 per license, I'm sure.

3) The source code most likely no longer exists, and even if it did, that's just too much work for a $6 game.

With 1 & 2 I agree.... With 3 I don't... It's not only for a 6$ game :) I think there a lot of 3.1 games that have place on GOG :)

ad 1 - why?

ad 2 - They could agree for a % of the game sold with Win 3.1. It would be a good deal for Microsoft, they would get money for nothing. And I don't believe in freeware.

ad 3 - GOG was looking ppl to revert hardcoding (which I believe should give them source code), so they have somthing similar in mind.

How about XP mode on Windows 7. Can that run 16-bit applications even if it is run through 64-bit?

Obviously not a solution that will allow GOG to distribute the game but I am just curious.

XP Mode is a virtual machine (MS Virtual PC) running a 32-bit verion of Windows XP, and a quite crappy VM at that (no hardware acceleration of graphics whatsoever, among other things). So, yes, like any other 32-bit Windows installation so far, it can run 16-bit applications.

Yes, but you'd have to do the same thing for each and every game, since each game has its own source code (except of course that for many of these old games, the source code is lost in the mists of time). So, as I said, it's too much for for a $6 game, any $6 game. Even if you could port one to a modern OS, you'd have to port each one separately, so it doesn't matter how many of them there are. The work per game is the same (except that some might be more difficult to port than others).

Or you can put up something similar like DosBox/ScummVM to work 3.1 games ;)

Because that's not the business GOG is in, and because it would be a gargantuan task. You don't just recreate an OS. Such a project would take years. Just ask QBix.
Whether or not such a move would make sense to you and me is entirely beside the point. I very much doubt that Microsoft would agree to such a deal. Plus, it would mean less profits for GOG. Remember, the publishers still have to have their cut as well.

And you don't believe in freeware? What do you mean? You don't believe it exists, or you don't believe it should exist?
I can tell you're not a programmer. It's one thing to decompile a program to some sort of low-level code, for the purpose of finding a few specific calls to some sort of DRM solution and redirecting them. It's quite another to attempt to port that code in its entirety to a different platform than it was written for.

Bandai Interactive... who are now Namco Bandai: GOG's best friends in the world.

*sadface*

Which was point #1, to which I said "Not going to happen", which you agreed with ;-)

Well, you can say that about almost anything ;-)

Is it possible? Yes.

Is it probable? No.

Mm time will tell...for me it will be profitable enough to make an emulator like that.

No it doesn't. Don't confuse unofficial patches and DOSBox builds with the official version.

Also DOSBox has been capable of loading Windows 9x for far longer than the latest nightlies....stability is another matter.

To put this to rest, I have it on a reliable source that the source code for the original JMP game is gone, or at least they are unable to locate it at this time. Some effort has been made to re it in scummvm, but most of the puzzles are hardcoded so it's going to be a lot of work to implement. Don't expect this to be released on gog anytime soon.