No, the $5/month thing is NOT necessary, in fact, it would work better (you'd get a more recent release) without it.
However, you will need to do some comiling / installing of winex on your own then. This is not hard -- usually just following the README's will work.
Also, note that the patch I provide requires you to get the source and recompile it. Without this AH's joystick support will be messed up. So you're forced to do the compile anyway instead of the $5/month thing
