what happened to "why the hostility"

[Simetrical]

On the status of mod work in copyrights: it is most definitely not under the GFDL. It is, by and large, derivative work of Activision/CA-owned copyrights.* Therefore, essentially, both Activision/CA and the actual author must agree to allow it to be distributed. Activision/CA has consented, implicitly or explicitly, for derivative works of its content (other than the hardcode) to be distributed freely, although it reserves the right to revoke this blanket permission in at least specific cases. However, the work still cannot be legally distributed without the actual author's permission, attribution or no, not even by Activision/CA. It would be illegal for a site to host any mod containing work used without authorization.

But then there's the second issue, that of using research. Outside of patent law, research is not protected as intellectual property. If EB's historians research a unit and then PROMETHEUS creates it to their specifications, the copyright (derivative or otherwise) belongs to PROMETHEUS. However, it can probably be considered that EB has the right to distribute the work as well; Legionario does not, I believe, have any legal right to bar EB from distributing his work in their mod. In fact, I believe many if not all contributors to EB implicitly give the exclusive right to distribute their work to EB, based on their clear understanding of an EB vote to that effect.

On the last two points, however, I'm not certain—I don't know whether the agreements EB has its recruits make are sufficient to be legally binding.

*Some work done for RTW, in all probability, does not qualify as derivative work. If you make your all models and from scratch, then that would doubtless not count as derivative, and Activision/CA would have no right to inhibit the use of that work in any context. All modifications to existing CA work would, to my knowledge, be derivative. This is all tangential to the main point, however, which is that the modder has the right to his work—in either case the work's creator can regulate its distribution as he chooses.

[Teleklos Archelaou]

I'm aware of no example of someone who doesn't want their current or prior work to be included in EB that is either currently in it or will remain in it. An example of Legionario not wanting his work to be included might seem to indicate that this was happening when it is not the case as far as I know.

[Steppe Merc]

If someone doesn't want their work in, then they probably didn't do it properly anyway...

[Simetrical]

I'm aware of no example of someone who doesn't want their current or prior work to be included in EB that is either currently in it or will remain in it. An example of Legionario not wanting his work to be included might seem to indicate that this was happening when it is not the case as far as I know.

I do recall he once made some sneering remark about EB using his work (when it wasn't). I don't know if he actually doesn't want EB to use his work, but it was hypothetical anyway.

-Simetrical

[Teleklos Archelaou]

I do recall he once made some sneering remark about EB using his work (when it wasn't). I don't know if he actually doesn't want EB to use his work, but it was hypothetical anyway.

-Simetrical

I think khelvan replied very quickly that his work was not included in EB and had been replaced. Or something to that effect.

[khelvan]

I do recall he once made some sneering remark about EB using his work (when it wasn't). I don't know if he actually doesn't want EB to use his work, but it was hypothetical anyway.

-Simetrical

He did make that remark, about a completely different unit that had nothing to do with the Laech he was making for us. Based on several different reasons, we did not include his work in any previews, and will not be including it in the final version.