Don't worry about the copyrights until you have something that works. Keep em in mind, but try getting a little further down the glidepath before you kill the project due to poorly understood legal issues. Those things kill you when you start handing the software out, and by then you will have decided whether something like this is worth pursuing.
And be careful with any legal advice, unless you have your law degree
As for the ability of the "people here" do do this sort of thing, I disagree. I think you guys can, you just have to "DO" it.
Kazan has already started thinking about the scope of this endeavor, what he sees as the end result (dropping a new exe, maybe some new files) and while I am not sure that is a viable approach, that is certainly an approach.
I'm not sure he's the man for the "coordinator" position, I'm not sure who is, gotta find someone who has pulled off a mod, start to finish, maybe that's him, maybe not. Find someone who's read "Rapid Development" or go out and read it
Get more stuff on paper, as it were. Scope the project. Think about the goals, think about how much work you want ot and CAN do. Kazan can certainly do some of that, he's got the start of the idea here, just needs to be written down in one coherent place. Then you have at least a straw man to kick around and punch holes in, and something to approach other people with to "sell them" on it to join the team other than "gee, wouldn't it be great if we made a video game like Freespace?" Once it's on paper (some of Narols stuff, for instance) you can start determining the feasibility of those technical challenges. Etc. See above for an overall approach.
Right now it's all mental masterbation.
