I felt the same when I read the article. I recommend watching the videos on the Firearms website. The mod seems to play a lot like the Half-Life version except with better graphics. I saw a ranking system which I don't remember in the old one. It looks like fun though I doubt it will pull me...
It seems to me that Valve is exploiting the loyalty of their fans for quick cash-ins. I hope that a lot of that money is invested in HL2 Ep3 to make it more than a corporate profit.
Play Stalker with this mod after you patch the game to at least version 1.0005 (not sure if Steam does that automatically, as I am currently playing a lent physical copy of the game). It fixes the headbobbing, improves graphics, and adds lots of nice features that the developers didn't get...