I share Phill's opinion. It's no option that Coppermine changes the server limits by default. Additionally, not all hosts allow ini_set, which will result in error messages like
Warning: ini_set() has been disabled for security reasons
(which could of course be suppressed by using @ini_set).
It would be possible to add is as an option to cpg1.6.x, but as people don't read and often set stupid high values it's maybe better to create a plugin for this purpose, so those people don't have any chance to blame Coppermine that their hosts have kicked them. Such a plugin is probably created quite fast and would be also available for cpg1.5.x.
Automatically resizing pictures during upload (according to the gallery settings) would of course be great, but doesn't ensure that there will be sufficient memory to process the uploaded pictures. But I think we should schedule such an uploader for cpg1.6.x.
I think we can avoid some support requests if we combine both the plugin and the new uploader.
Moving to feature requests board.