I'm just going to throw it out there for the sake of it but you asked whether or not you should use it and asked for opinions and then when people gave their opinions you turned around and defended the mod. You seem pretty set on using it so why not just use it? From the looks of all your...
You do realise that Valve is an American company right? So they adhere to the American holiday structure. So by 'holiday season' they mean the area around fall.
Remember Half-Life 2s development? Hell, remember Half-Life 1s development? They are not a fast company when it comes to development, the only reason they're getting faster is because they are not taking on massive projects like before. It's like everyone forgot about their slow development of...
As far as I know, all Source mods require a game running on the Source engine, typically HL2 deathmatch. Some mods require other Source games for the content used in the mod.
Also, if I recall, all mods require Source SDK Base to run a mod. If I remember, if you only have the HL2 demo then you...