I feel like we need to be less anal about sharing, but also not just take whatever we want, willy nilly. It’s more like, “Always give credit, ask where possible unless it’s unnecessary (ie: Open Source FEditor thread), and always give back to the community if you take from the community.”
Let me put it this way. There are people out there who makes good sprites, but they are awful at not just hacking, but possibly game balance, story, writing dialogue, etc. Everyone has one weakness or another. If you’re not ‘in’ and you’re not a part of one of the unspoken of cliques/hacking guilds, it’s really hard to get help. Furthermore, if you’re no good at creating resources, but you’re really good at using resources, and you can craft a game like no other but you lack the ability to create resources for the community, can your excellent game not serve as your own contribution?
Like, for example, there are people who are amazing at their job of picking vegetables. Maybe they can even cook a little. But if a master chef comes in with no ability to pull/grow vegetables, but he knows how to make a hell of an amazing dish, doesn’t his dish contribute to the community just as much as the resource gatherers do? Should he be excluded just because “You didn’t pick any vegetables so you don’t have the right to use any!”? I think not.
Unlike the above scenario though, our ‘vegetables’ are unlimited. You can “pick” a sprite off a board as many times as you want, and so can an infinite number of other people. Why not just let anyone do it, providing they credit the one who made it? Why hoard when we can share? Furthermore, if we encourage sharing instead of hoarding, perhaps the new people will say to themselves “Wow, this community has lots of sprites, I will try and make my own!” leading them to eventually contribute not just their game, but eventually their own resources.
At least, that’s my own viewpoint.