Criticism of the second-hand icon theme centered on the notion that the Oxygen project proper should get to release the icons first — since the official Oxygen theme wasn’t dubbed a public release yet, no one else should be allowed to publicly release them either. As one commenter put it, “What about the people who spend two years of work on this? Should not they have the right to publish it in their project before you copy it?”
But the answer is a clear and resounding “no.” When you choose to place your work on a publicly accessible server, and when you decide to place it under a free software license, you give up the right to control what other people do with it.
The secondary complaint — that it is wrong to release the icons before the project declares them “ready” — is entirely incompatible with the “release early, release often” philosophy. Artwork is no different from executable code in either regard.
The fact that free software licenses and the open source development model force everyone to relinquish that level of control is intentional, and is key to making community-driven development work.