What's wrong with that? That's how we've survived for the last, ummm... 8 years of making games!
It's most likely not Steve and Charles primary motivation, but if that is a feasible business alternative for them then that makes total sense. It insulates them from any potential commercial risk (any game can be a financial failure, even a CM game... well, not likely in their case ) and by creating a "non-commerical" version they can even fund some of their additional modules that could be released (to some degree).
I'm personally ECSTATIC about the modern setting (but, I'm obviously biased ) and I know that BFC is going to do an outstanding job with that era of warfare.