Why is a common ground mandatory? As it is there is no cohesion or overt cooperation between the various mod-groups beyond cross-incorporation of some individual mods. And, unless I'm getting senile, any kind of "unification movement" was dead within days of its announcement. Simply put: There is simply no will to unite the various mod groups within the modding scene itself, mostly because different people have different ideas about what to mod and how and of course because people prefer diversity, so there is little to no common ground in that area already. And then come the limitations TD has agreed to observe ... limitations most mod users would surely refuse to accept. Diversity, remember?
The division into a modding camp and a stock camp is a fact of 1946 which cannot be discussed away nor can it be overcome. That genie has been out of its bottle for so long that it simply refuses to go back in ...