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I'm not going to form an opinion here, but after reading through all of this I thought I would point out the long term as well as the well discussed short term economic impacts of this sort of thing.
We are under the assumption that BFE and OBX are in fact just copying the designs (I haven't heard any real evidence to the contrary, but perhaps I'm wrong) of ARH and Kooks without any R&D costs added in therefor they cost less. In keeping with the short term goal of maximizing performance per dollar you are probably better off going with BFE or OBX. This is also assuming that you don't need support or warranty or any of that, just product performance per dollar spent. Short term goal accomplished.
However, from a long term standpoint, the more and more people purchase from those companies (BFE and OBX) that are not doing the R&D themselves and are just copying designs from those like Kooks and ARH, the greater the potential for ARH and Kooks to become unprofitable and the greater the chance for them to eventually go out of business. This becomes a serious problem because now there is either less money/time/manpower available for new R&D to be done in the future in the field of headers and/or the companies doing the R&D go out of business and another company will have to pick up the R&D slack. Now that may be a long ways off, and a company may pick that slack off if it comes to that, but the bottom line is that the more people buy knockoffs instead of originals, the less funding R&D will have in general and in turn the lower the quality will go in general.
Really it's the guys doing there own R&D that are holding the knockoff guys on their shoulders business wise. If the people like Kooks and ARH stop doing R&D then the knockoff guys will have to knock off the next lowest company on the quality/R&D totem pole until that company can't stay competitive either and the downward cycle continues.
Money in the hands of the guys doing the research and development is money available for more research and development down the road. Money in the hands of people who copy designs of others is just money handed off to a company with no real long term return for it.
I only mention any of this because no one else seems to have noticed the long term potential effects of knocking off products. The larger the market share that knockoff companies gain, the greater the risk that the companies that provide the designs in the first place will fall apart and then everyone loses.
I do agree that it should be mentioned when someone is selling a product that is designed by another company without there permission. But I also agree that there is a more diplomatic approach to making that knowledge available than what has gone on in this thread.
Just a thought.
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