Quote: "if all of the source to fpsc & all its mods is open, why couldn't someone just take all of the positive things from each ones source, put them together and recompile into a "super mod" combining all of their strengths?i am going to assume it cant be done because if so, someone would have done it by now. why? "
To expand on what others have said, first off not all the mods are open source. A few were, but most were not.
I'm one of the developers for an x9 mod and it is not an easy thing to just merge all mods into a "super mod". First off, there's compatibility with the code. What I mean by this is one mod has this block of code to do this function, and we use that block of code to do the same function. How do you determine which code to use? In our mod, our code and systems are all intertwined together (example: inventory system ties into the character selection system, etc). If you use code from our mod, then you will need to also include code for other systems as well.
In a nutshell, you can end up gumming down FPSC by adding all the mods together into a "super mod". I know for a fact that you could not take code from a couple of the mods to merge together because of the coding style and techniques employed by the developers. You also have to look at who gets to determine what goes in, how much goes in, etc. In all honesty, it would become a nightmare for TGC to do this, as they'd be tracking down developers to try and fix bugs.
- BlackFox