I must also point out that this can in no way be interpreted as helping commanders. Most commanders involved are NOT doing this intentionally.
1. They encountered a bug.
1. is fine - they encountered some bug and needed help - that's fine.
2. Fdev INCORRECTLY restored their ship OUTSIDE the cluster.
Yes, this seems to be the case, but...
3. They sold exploration data assuming data from inside the cluster would be lost.
This is where it all goes Pete Tong. This data should NOT have been sold. It was supposed to be a 1-way trip. The data was not supposed to have been able to be returned under a ship's own steam.
This is unfair to these commanders who will now inevitably be accused of cheating AND to the rest of the commanders on the Distant Stars Expedition who will feel slighted for having this pristine cluster muddied by tags.
No. It is unfair to everyone else who plays the game as intended, who went on the Distant Stars Expedition knowing full well it was supposed to be a 1-way trip and were fully prepared to self-destruct.
It's unfair to those CMDR's who DID in fact self-destruct.
No one is accusing the one or two CMDR's who sold their data of cheating - but nevertheless - that is unearned data, and for the reasons cited above it is grossly unfair to those other CMDR's.