I agree, if it is available in the format you have to use, then it must be bought. But I will also not kill myself for priciples for something that is obviously no longer available or supported.
As for the Spit MkI, any licenced add on seller that puts something like that out that they took from a modding site is open to so horrible legal attacks. And no, I dont mean from UBI, or 1c, or even the modders. But from the myriad of "undisclosed" sources of little pieces of mods that no one knows about untill the legal letters arrive.
This is the reason 1c has been unable to put out a buyable disk that contains any mods, because one just does not know who and where every little piece is from. As for that Spit MkI, if the makers of the pack took it upon themselves to knock the cannon barrels off the MkV and replace the Spinner, more power to them, but I seriously doubt it is the Spit MkI we have, and if it is, they can pack their bags, cause they will be out of business within a week. Anyway, from the screenshots it looks like what I said first, and not very impressive either.
Making mods free and keeping it that way is not only the "loophole" that alloows us to coexist with the silent support of the creators of the game, but also, in a very real way, protects the community from the manymany outside sources we secretly and frequently steal from. (to put it bluntly). And while we are not overt or stupid about these things, the moment money starts flowing in from things, then the charitability, generosity and friendlyness of otherwise good people (or at least people who otherwise just dont give a shit) rapidly changes, and you rapidly end up in a position where noone can do anything worthwile, because everyone wanted a piece of the buck, and where the whole flightsim world is spending all it's time stopping each other from doing anything, for the outside chance that someone may make a dollar from it, rather than making anything that we want to play with.
Be cause we are free, financially, and free, legally ( in large part BECAUSE we are free financially) we get to make the realy cool stuff we all want, not only the stuff we are allowed to do, or that is marketable or viable, and we get to release it in a time span that makes sense to players of the game, not in a time span that protects us from recourse.
I for one want to say though, about BEO, which is honeslty now completely dated and unsupplied and unsupported, that it seems the great unsung hero of this all, is this Enjoyr guy (or people), I mean, look at all that support, and patches, and updates, and all for free, just like our mods. Incredible!
I think I shall be seeking them out and making a little donation soon.