If it's being publicly released then it's not really stealing from another mod.
But I don't know if the mods would impliment it, many people on Discovery have old PCs and wouldn't be able to play on higher graphical versions of Freelancer.
Unless we had the option of using either version and still playing on the same server. Graphical changes are serverside as far as I know.
Would also significantly increase the size of the mod, I think. Not entirely sure..