Even if it was pre-cropped to the nearest pixel it might still have all the white space if those objects can't be placed to the nearest power of 2.
That would probably be solved, at least in this case by rotations.
As to the duplicates, I always assumed it was based on the object, if not to all the objects animations, as it should assumed there would be no duplicate textures on other objects, relying a bit too much on some planning on the users part perhaps.
Anyway we have to belay casting blame as there's only one person doing the development, and his todo list, even though it is legendary, is not public, and while those changes aren't exactly trivial, aren't basically basic.