If you can't recognize the importance of avoiding copyright violations, then you've got a problem, not I.
But since we're at it, let me deconstruct that one, because it's really astonishing:
If terrasync had corrected it, TerraGit would have not been founded.
In other words, if feature X is desirable but not implemented by others, the solution is to create a fork and do it yourself. Not to just contribute to a solution. Not to initiate a discussion and see if a solution is found - no - fork away and do whatever you like.
If I had used that argument with rendering reasonable fog, we'd now have 'Flightgear ALS + AW'. Which wouldn't support MP at all, because, hey - I don't do MP, not interested. There'd also be 'Flightgear Rembrandt'. 'Flightgear ALS + AW' however could also not run the higher resolution scenery, because that required some core changes which I couldn't have made. So we'd have 'Flightgear hires scenery capable' (which probably could do MP as well) - but not ALS, AW or Rembrandt.
See the picture? We'd have ended up with about a hundred, partially compatible, partially incompatible FG forks. For a normal user, trying to run hires scenery in MP using ALS (which 'just works' with the FG we have created) would be impossible. Whereas if everyone would have used your type of 'reasoning', we'd have this huge mess.
Now, there's a good general principle to evaluate actions called the
Categorical imperative:
Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.So - unless you think that everyone who misses a feature should create a fork (and a huge incompatible mess in the process) - YOU shouldn't do it either - you should do the reasonable thing and work together with everyone else to create one single framework.
Of course, as long as all others cooperate and contribute to a single framework, you can usually get away looking better by not playing nice (that's mathematically formulated in the
Prisoner's dilemma if you're interested). Of course, if everyone does the same, it's misery a hundred times for everyone. Which is what a great thinker like Kant realized and was out to prevent - the right thing to do for everyone is not to maximize your short term gain, it is co-operation for the greater good of everyone.
Think for a minute what the state of FG would be if everyone would do his own fork for every new feature.