Personally, I think I'll wait until I get around to trying to contact someone from Elecbyte myself, probably the weekend after this one (don't wanna bother him while he's busy), before deciding about anything in regard to WinMugen.

You mean taking the illegitimate parts of the character, keeping the legitimate stuff, and hosting it, for example?...

As for implications of possibly allowing the discussion of the hack here, would anyone be fundamentaly against the allowing of creation updates made in the same mold as Rou Hei's hack (couple of years of original creator's absence that makes him practically impossible to contact, proper credit given where its due, compromise to withdraw the update if the original creator asks for it) if the original creator never left anything specifically stated about the use of his stuff?...

In the case of Ogre you have ALOT to correct though

Not talking codewise but accuracy wise.

But how does one know what all coding is stolen and what coding is Jun's?

Might be best to go touch and go: ask the community what *exactly* has been stolen in what character/stage etc, and go from there, fixing it up as it comes out.

What classifies a creation to be updated for being abandoned:

1) Creator cannot be reached by email, IRC, ICQ, MSN or any other way.
2) Creator's site doesn't exist anymore

3) No known friends or contacts that are in touch with the creator, or that can authorize/deny the use fo the abandoned creator.
4) More than 2 years have passed since the release of the character.

Once all these conditions have been checked, the creation can be used as long as a text file is attached with the updated creation.

This text file will contain:

1) Email addresses or methods used to contact the creator without success
2) url of the site that is not existing anymore

3) Name of the people that have been contacted in order to find out if the character was allowed to be used.

4) Date of the last public release.

5) A statement that if the original creator ever returns or decides that no one should work on that creation, the distribution of the updated creation must cease.

Of course, the original creator must be credited always. And if part of sprites/code is used in another character, then the "borrowed" parts must be credited as well.

Private releases and creations that already contained stolen stuff aren't applicable to this new standard.

Edit: My
"Unless vanished creator was known for messages like DO NOT MODIFY or REDISTRIBUTE, yes." from 3 billion words earlier in this topic stands, and should enough for a guidline.

But don't we have to verify this with other communities 1st? If I recall the japanese community is very picky about "updating".

If not we will be in the same situation as MGBR. Many creators in that community believe all is open source.

Ogre doesn't really strike me the kind of character that was meant to be accurate...  

Why don't we just base the way we allow these updates on the standard of procedure XG said.

Stating that leniency straying away from these abit will be tolerated under certain circumstances.

I don't want the rules getting longer either The standard is a nice base and Loona has good points too so some leaveway from the standard should be acceptable.

Make a new release/wip board for creations like this. This way the creator can announce the WIP and ask if he/she is unshure if they are straying too far away from the standard.

Or make it so that only creators can do so in the creator release and private release boards.

The pros of this are that if the person has the creator status it is generally accepted that that person took a descent amount of time and knows the trials and time consuming nature of creating. This way it may be easier for other communities to accept since the creator has already established a knowhow.

The cons of that one is not all people that are creators have this status. OrochiKOF97 for one.

This isn't getting

nowhere