Long winded reply to Mister Big T:
Value was made for RPG Maker 2000, not 2003. The translation would be for RPG Maker 2003. While you can legally purchase RPG Maker 2000 Value through the Japanese site, there's no plans that I'm aware of translating that to English, which is a shame because I think the Value would have been a better choice (but just my opinion).
If RM2K3 was released and legally bought, you would be able to use those resources in any other legally owned RM product (so yes, if you were to buy a legal version of RM2K3 you could use the resources in Ace as long as you own Ace as well).
As for other sites posting edits, revisions, etc... if the resource is a simple recolor to something you already own (ie., recoloring the RTP), I don't see how they can prevent you from using it in a commercial project, simply because anybody can make the same change. However, if the revision, edit, change is more than a simple recolor, more than likely you'll need to find the terms and conditions as provided by the website or the resource artist, and/or ask their permission for use in a commercial project. Degica can't give the go-ahead to allow you to use resources made by other people on another website in commercial projects without first getting approval from the artists on those websites, nor do I imagine they care to spend the time doing that for you.
As for what will be fixed and how, I'm not sure. RM2K3 had a lot of problems, and I've heard rumors that the problems were so plentiful that EB decided against updating the program any further in favor of updating RM2K instead. I don't if that's true or not, or necessarily what problems plague RM2K3 beyond a slow ATB, but I do know that while sales for RM2K Value have been growing strong in Japan, sales for RM2K3 have more or less diminished.
There's been talk that some of the bigger bugs may be fixed, but don't expect a whole lot beyond translation. The intent is to translate it and sell it fairly cheap, but not put much more effort beyond that in order to retain the $20 expected price. If more attention is put into it, the cost would probably have to go up. Considering how old the maker is, not very many people would be willing to purchase this for more than $20, regardless of what has been fixed.
You can think of the $20 as a means of getting access to the RTP more so than the program. The program is a benefit, for sure, but a lot of people seem to be interested in just the RTP, which is another reason why Degica won't do much more beyond a simple translation.
Another thing to keep in mind is that neither RM2K or 2K3 includes a scripting feature. Everything has to be done with events. While it's a good tool in getting people to learn to rely on events versus scripts, it also means there is no way (legally) to really fix the problems that plague the program. There are plugs and patches that do fix a lot of the problems (similar to Yanfly's Core scripts), but because these plugs and patches rely on the source code of the maker they're considered a breach of the EULA and could not be used for commercial projects.
In the end, it's really about the RTP. While a lot of the music is nice, and you will get some legal use of sideview monsters, most of the resources are very outdated and would need to be cleaned up. However, if your sole purpose is to use the RTP in Ace, you're going to have to have to know how to resize, reformat, and organize the sprites, charsets, and tiles to work. Good luck with configuring the autotiles. You're also going to need to edit, revise, and otherwise clean them up in order to blend them in with Ace's style to avoid clashing. If you can't do any of these things, you're going to need to find somebody that will do it for you.
Because of this, I stand by with others who said they'd rather have Degica spend their time and money updating the resources into Ace's style instead of translating an ancient maker with resources that no longer fit. The only exception may be, with a legal RM2K3 copy, you can then legally use the RM2K/3 sprites and tilesets that were made by Mack (found at First Seed Material) for commercial projects. The resources available for RM2K/3 at First Seed Material is a whole world better than what was given for VX, and includes a crapload of additional content. While they are considerably overused as it is, they still look exceptionally nice compared to default RTP.
