As a developer, it is difficult to deal with animations uploaded by others and publicizing my own animations, because other users are restricted from playing any animations that aren’t owned by themselves or by a group that they have edit access for.
These restrictions have no reason to stay in place especially now that we have FilteringEnabled. Besides, animating the client with welds created locally replicates in FE anyway.
Changing animations to be loadable anywhere just like audio, decals and models would make them much easier to share.
Well, neither really. Animations should still be secure - but you should be able to whitelist people who can use them. Just because people can steal them via exploits doesn’t mean we should just give them out to everyone. The reason for having restrictions is so people don’t use your animations without permission - that’s not really what you want, especially as a good animator having your animations used in hundreds or thousands of games if you publish them.
I see no good reason to remove the restrictions, but rather something like a whitelist should be used to give permission to groups and people to use it. It might be more hassle, but it’s better than letting everyone use your animations. I suppose another option could be a choice to make your animation uploaded free, so anyone can use it.