Well that's extremely unfortunate.

I would think that crowdsourcing software would be quite effective (for the software itself) even if it isn't profitable...

What exactly? I don't think coding someone else's product falls under copyright protection (and certainly not for the copyright holder of said product). A game isn't a language after all. And plenty of modders would gladly give their changes to IC or Stardock to use.

Thank you!  Been playing for YEARS and did not know i could do that!

I pay no attention to lead ships so that's why i didn't know this until now. I only disassemble carriers/carrier capital ships from fleets so they stay at the edge of gravity wells to be able to escape easily. I couldn't give a rats behind if my scout was lead.  .

Lead ship is important because it will determine how close your fleet should stay together and if that lead ships jumps out of battle, then your fleet jumps out.

I also know devs could really sometimes use the modder's hard work to aid them.

Still, for some reason - I have never heard that happen and I've been playing quite a few games whose devs could really use modders' "help". 
The closest things to what we're talking about here that I have witnessed were Creative Assembly employing a long-time modder (Lusted) and Whoever-it-was-who-developed-Civilization5 employing whoever-it-was-who-whined-a-lot-about-Civ4 so that he could get his chance on having the community's ideas into the game.

The only explanation I can come up with could either be that there is some legal barrier (like, "you stole my work, PAY ME!!" + legal case) or the devs simply cannot understand what the modders coded (too sophisticated, unclear, not enough comments, bad formatting... modders know how hard it can be to read through other person's code if he isn't careful).

This has seemed to be the case any time the issue has arrived. When there is money involved, even a simple 'You can have it for free' contract can often easily be overturned in court. It's all about the company watching their backs, whether they like it or not. That's how money works.

BTW this is probably the best bit of news in that Q&A. Should greatly change the way we play the game and make multiplayer more interesting too.

I approve this troll.  He's consistent.

More coherent than RiddleKing, at least.

When I was going over mods, I recall something about Flagships. Perhas the Last Flagship Standing is homage to that? Probably not,but maybe I just like to be a contrarian.

Also, I agree that we should have more options in game to tweak game settings. For example, I've heard on this forum of people playing "no cap ship" or "cap ships only" games. I know this has nothing to do with modders, but it would be cool if they plugged in some of those settings in.

Lastly, since for the past 10 years I've been a console guy mostly, all I think about when someone talks about modding is Warthog Racing above maps on Halo 2... that was fun.

Hard to say, but the flagship mod just gives each player an enhanced version of a regular capitalship I think. This sounds like a player is eliminated when their first capitalship is destroyed (whether the flagships have anything special about them remains to be seen).

Agree with Goa and... Saw an original Beta video someone posted in another thread that had Last flagship standing as an on/off toggle. Apparently this is something Ironclad had envisioned at one time in the games history. 

minecraft does