Spring RTS Engine

I was wandering around, watching some C&C:Generals replays.
And something hit me suddenly.
I really miss the days of Generals - and a bunch of other games, like Rise of Nations. And i am somewhat familiar to Spring games and the engine itself - i tried NOTA some years ago, and occasionally play Zero-K.
The former ones miss one features (naval units in C&C Generals, scale of units/buildings/battlefield itself), latter the other ones, but what i personally lack most in Spring is setting. Some good fiery modern warfare.
So i put around hour or so in Blender and paint.net (to make something like a very-very basic texture) and put these to the table.
I'm bad at programming and/or scripting in general, but i think ( - i hope!) i can put those to the battlefield and make some dirty moves. There are docs after all.
General questions appearing to me are the ones below:
Is the wiki obsolete so bad? Seems like no "empty" or "tutorial" projects work anymore. Some forum lurking proves the point.

Answer in one of the topics suggested "stripping flat" one of already good games and populating it with own models along with some scripts tuned, fixed or customized fitting the situation. Well, huge projects are complicated; I'm not sure i can at least make sense for myself how any feature work, what goes where, which script controls what, etc. On the other side - isn't it just theft? I've been pirating a lot, but plagiarizing "full scale" like this is as bad as stealing one's soul, isn't it? So, taking in view all of the above - what is the best place to get acknowledged in Spring basics right now? I saw some mention about BAR project mainly developing the engine right now, maybe this is the resource do dig into? i just want to script some basic units, like builder, factory, mex, few weapons as a test polygon. I already took a quick look in some basic Lua, like armordef/weapondef/unitdef, fairly understandable, self-descriptive and easy (for my dumb lower back part).

Is starting the project at all worthy? Like, would anyone like it and somehow follow or contribute, maybe i can get some help from aside, or someone interested in joining? I'm lazy, unconsistent and sometimes drop things "half here" - no, that doesn't mean "make a game for me" at all, but some responsibility in front of co-devs and/or community is a lot more disciplining and motivating, as well as occasional help i can get directly from some more experienced user base.

And last question - I don't understand a single bit in licensing, what's all about it in Spring, what should i know and be 100% aware of, and what are my rights about the product itself (if it does ever leave "side-project for my own good" phase)?

I really appreciate any feedback, and thank you for keeping such amazing piece alive, be it the engine, the wiki or the forum.

From the licensing side, the engine code is GPLv2+. All Lua used with the engine is impacted by the copy-left nature of the GPL licenses and so also bound by the GPL, so you are certainly not stealing code - it is free and open sourced. Other projects' audio and art assets are another matter, but it seems you're working on your own assets so that may not be an issue.

In essence with the GPL the principle is: the source is open and available to anyone who receives your work. Any work that is combined or derived from GPL source code is also GPL and is not permitted to be combined with source whose license imposes any additional restrictions above the GPL. There's more to it, but that's kinda the main thing about it: making source code available and stopping others benefiting from the work without also making their work available as well.

So, you can make a commerical game from Spring Engine, but the source code for your game must be available to everyone who receives a copy of your game (and you can't stop them sharing that source code with the rest of the world.) Your art/audio assets however, can be licensed as you see fit.

A new game project will be a huge undertaking, so I'd advise to keep your starting scope as stupidly small as possible. Like, 1 tank, and a factory to make tanks, and get that working. That will take some time, especially while learning a new game engine. After that, you at least have something, and maybe the energy to continue. But working in the smallest possible steps is the best way - if the step seems stupidly small, then it may be possible without running out of energy.

With FOSS projects, you've got to build something first before you'll draw attention and volunteers (unless you get lucky.) We can never have enough RTS games. :)

There is a WW2-based Spring game if you would rather get involved with an existing project. I don't know how active it is today though. It is called: Spring 1944

Nice models, will look nice as units ingame

Actually spring games are fairly quick to get together. Join a discord or the irc channels.

Thanks for all of your replies.

keep your starting scope as stupidly small as possible

It is, actually - i look for a builder, mex, powerplant, basic factory and few units, 3-4 i think.
Need to dive into licenses, seems to be pretty easy to understand after your comment.