This is somewhat of a half-baked thought, but bear with me for a second...
I'm sure many of the Exult community often look at the excellent capabilities and possibilities of the engine and feel a sense of frustration (or sadness?) over the relative lack of new game development utilizing those capabilities. That's not to ignore the credit that the great mods out there deserve - there's some good work happening but often I wonder why there aren't more projects around.
Along these lines, has any thought been given to "marketing" Exult more as an open-source RPG engine rather than strictly an Ultima 7 engine?
Consider the official description of Exult: "... a project to recreate Ultima 7 for modern operating systems, using the game's original plot, data, and graphics files."
With Exult Studio and the associated toolset - along with the experience and enhancements being collected from the various mods in development - it strikes me that perhaps the official description implies a narrower set of possibilities than there are in reality. Those interested in RPG development - but unfamiliar with Ultima 7 or Exult itself - may be overlooking Exult as an excellent basis for their RPG development.
Admittedly, a greater focus on improving support for New Games would be a start - e.g. "newgame.txt" and ES's "Create New Game" functionality needs updating to reflect recent developments and work out-of-the-box. But I'm thinking also about the advertised necessity to own a copy of Ultima 7 - when, in fact, the engine is almost to the point where this is unnecessary (i.e. if working from a minimal set of self-created data files). Again, enhancing new game support would help here, and would possibly give Exult a greater audience and thus bigger potential to provide the basis for new game development.
I don't know if this is making any sense, but hopefully it's clear where I'm coming from
. I thought a while back (and posted) a suggestion for an "Exult art repository" which I think would work well alongside improved standalone New Game support in Exult. Admittedly I haven't done anything about it though, partly due to the lack of web development skills 
. Oh well, just a few thoughts on the future of Exult I guess
Achenar