: So, (excuse my while I venture into complete lack of real knowledge town),
: the only way to avoid the legality debate altogether would be to develop a
: new style of shapes file, and have Aleph One also reflect those changes?
That would be a solution of last resort, if Bungie were to suddenly become unreasonable about allowing files in those formats to be distributed.
: I'm assuming it isn't jut a simple matter of developing a header as it'd
: end up pretty much the same as what Bungie had in their originally?
I'm dubious that they can claim copyright over the header to start with, since the values in it vary based on the file's contents. Even if they were to do so, simply re-arranging a few things would suffice. Copyright protects an expression of an idea, not the idea itself.
Now, if they were to have a patent on "method of indexing the contents of a map file" or some nonsense like that, it would be a different story, because the patent system is so totally broken there's no way to know what will pass muster. I'll just get a different hobby if that happens.
