<speaks with the voice of Darth Vader> See to it personally commander, there will be no one to stop us now...
Zireael is indeed the powerful expert, as the Emperor has forseen, and maybe he now too can share a more optimistic appraisal of the situation
Dizzy, thanks for sharing and indeed hat tip to Zireael for linking it; Let's not start bickering or splitting hairs again here, as I said, I will send FD an email, with screenshots of the station (first in its unaltered state) and see what they have to say. Since I am a firm believer of giving credit where due, I was going to add them to the credits list in the readme file even before this tirade started. The difference is that I now know what to write in the readme.
Then there are three options following this email:
1:) Either they don't give a toss about it, and will not reply, which will be viewed by me as an approval from them to release it, which I will. (putting a disclaimer to remove it at their wish) which is more than reasonable since the station creation idea is taken from the Orbis, but the intellectual property is mine. (see scifimeshes.com where people model Millenium Falcons to sell these models for their OWN profit and do not get bothered by lawyers)
2:) They respond with the fact that they are ok with it, then see point above.
3:) They respond and deny the release (unless I change it that much, that it differs enough from the Orbis, visually distinguishing mine from theirs.
However, I would like that their decision and letters will be stickied here somewhere on the forum as a future reference for anyone who wishes to use ED's fan fiction as an inspirational for their work and release it in Oolite.
As a message to any other doomsday scenario speculators about ED closing down Oolite; I refer to Disembodied's post earlier, which exactly reflects my idea on the matter, he only used a more colorful tone to get his point across.