meh, there are a few 'unofficial' mods floating about i've learned exist. so not having an 'official' release isnt gonna upset me terribly. as to updates and what-not, my plan had been to make a complete 'as-is' package. truth, the reason for this is a friend wanting exactly this when i told him what i had done to my game via mods, and i figured if it was already packaged why not share it? and because this is basically just MY version of the game, at some point down the road, as i update individual mods and tweak piecemeal as i go, i will have made enough changes to justify repacking it for my friend again. (and actually, despite my modding noobishness, i've been fixing a fair few bugs as i go XD)
still have a lot of work to do before it is ready to share with my friend, never mind anyone else. but perhaps a compromise could be reached on a release here? there are a LOT of mods i have bashed together now. which means seeking permission from a LOT of people. would a certain threshold of explicit permission be acceptable? say 60%, with conditions that i actively try to expand the list of those who have given consent (i expect getting a hold of most of the authors to be the real hurdle), and that anything an author asks be removed is done immediately.
edit - tbh, most of what i have done so far, aside from fixing aforementioned bugs, was making sure each empire's color was distinct enough i could remove secondary segments entirely, normalizing naming conventions, and allowing them to interact with the other mods content (such as making sure most places outlaw hazard mining's red water).