As for the impact, we should perhaps be more careful about things which are relatively difficult to replace, such as tile sets and scripts (which might be another reason for not including them in CEP).
This is not true actually. Ive dealt with this issue when working on my Patch project. You can't really patent scripts. They are easy to remake. And you actually can't restrict any fixes too. For example, you've made a fix for an uncapped caster level in Firestorm spell and uploaded it on vault. I download it open it and see what you have done. Now, I can do that myself because all I need is a knowhow. This fix is basically only a 1character added into spellscript file nothing else. There is nothing that would prevented me from opening the original version from core games and reapply the fix ive seen in your script on my own. And I dont definitely need your permission for it.
Knowing this, I didnt asked anybody (except ILKAY) and simply did it on my own, but I credited original knowhow finders.
Similar case was the Krit's improved electrifix magnificier script. I didn't needed his permission because I didn't wanted his script at all (he has nasty habit of putting his prefixes into variable names) so I only took the idea - looked at his features and made it on my own in my way. I still credited him for the original idea though to be fair.
And this can be the case also for some tileset additions like those Im doing recently. You can't really restrict them - anyone can do that from scratch and with same result...
Both tilesets and script systems have proved emotive in the past, on the games I've been involved with; animations, too, come to think of it. Regardless of our ethical judgement, they carry a risk of a firestorm. Some independent builders might decide to weather the storm, but others won't want the headache. Major projects like CEP have to consider their reputation with other content authors, so they too might act conservatively, taking steps, as we see here, to head off trouble before it begins.
Anyone who does decide to replace a tileset, non-trivial script or animation set faces an enormous amount of work, even if they have the skills, which will stop their project moving forward for a considerable time. That's what I mean by high impact; it's not a decision to be taken lightly.
On the other hand, if, for example, someone insists on ripping their Jabberwock model, all the builder has to do is substitute a different creature appearance, and edit any dialogue or other text that refers to Jabberwock, which, while annoying, would probably be no more than a day's work. My point was that CEP is probably doing the right thing in restricting content to those relatively low impact cases.
