It's common courtesy to ask for permission, but it's also common courtesy to allow everyone to use your patches.
Everything you said was great and well put together. I personally agree with everything you mentioned, I just thought I'd clear a few things up for you.
The Patchers need for fame. People are going to want to be the best at something. Whether it's sports or modifying a videogame. For me personally, the main reason I didn't give permission for people to use my street courts was because I was already making my full fledged street mod. So I didn't want to give up the "exclusiveness" of my courts in my own mod. I didn't want someone to take my courts, make a street mod, and beat me to the punch, if you will, yet I still wanted to release stuff to the community.
The Chinese situation, if i remember correctly, went down like this. Group A, EGS (i think) created the first iff editor. Then 3DM (who cracked 2k9 but refused to release it, lol) also started making an editor. "Santa" leaks out the EGS iff editor here. And a while after, Showfom finally releases the good 3DM tool. They were competing groups, I don't know over what, but it is a completely different type of community.
Generally, when someone gives credit to a patcher in their post, how am I supposed to know they didn't ask permission first. I can't check every patch on here. So the only way I find out is if the original patch maker says something.
The way I do things is if you claim that this is your patch, deny using someone else's as a base when proven wrong, and throw a hissy fit. Fuck off, go somewhere else. They are getting banned. However, if someone gives credit, gets caught, and the original patcher still wants to have disipline against the "stealer" who is sorry. They will get a warning, download taken down, and locked topic. That is it.
Again, a simple work around for this. Let's say I make a street court for 2k9. But I'm not giving permission for it. You can create your street roster, link to my post for the court, and then create a batch file that copies and renames it for your roster. But again, then you have the issue of importing your own textures and crap without my permission.