hugen very seldom gets into any of the back and forth on the forums regarding any of his products. He lets his reputation and designs do the talking through feedback from user's who are satisfied with his products.
I very much doubt he would engage in any intentional unethical behavior. One of his US distributers was pricing hugen's version of the SAA-2 at a price that was $10 below market. It turned out that distributor was was offering a LOWEND SAA-2 with RG316 cables and a $10 higher priced HIGHEND SAA-2 with SS405 cables. Nothing unethical about offering the customer a choice if they are only planning on using the SAA-2 up to 1.5GHz.
The same US distributor used some wording Gabriel disagreed with and she called the distributor unethical. Again it was a unintentional mistake by a well respected ham store, R&L Electronics. As soon as they learned of the error, R&L changed the boilerplate wording which was text other Asian manufacturers are still using.
I bought one of the original SAA-2's from Tindie, as did several members of my Ham club. It is an innovative product and outside of its UI, is independent of Edy555's original design. Customer loyalty, however, on goes so far and presented with a choice between two products that have similar performance the pocket book generally decides.
I just ordered hugen's 4" SAA-2N because I believe it is a better value than the current Tindie offering. Some of my other club members did the same. hugen's packaging, metal enclosure, relocation of the buttons from the awkward location between the connectors, 4" display and type N connectors are more in line with how I will be using the SAA-2N. Hugen was very upfront in his planned announcement of the SAA-2N, "There is no innovation, just a new shell."
Gabriel has said that if not enough sells of the V2 are generated at the Tindie store then it could jeopardize development of a future follow-on 6GHz product. If I was interested in 6GHz operation I would definitely take that into consideration when making a purchase. Neither I or any of my ham club members have interests above 3 GHz so that was not a consideration in any of our current purchases. I suggested to Gabriel's OEM seller that they have fallen behind some of the other manufacturer's who offer a complete package of battery, shell, and accessories. The reply I received was that a battery is not a technical innovation. While true, it certainly weighed in on several of my club member's decision, along with the other factors, when they made their decision to purchase hugen's SAA-2N.
Hugen and edy555 before him, have had to contend with the same flood of marketers using their open source design. That's just the nature of the Asian market. hugen has stayed ahead of the curve by making his offerings stand out with distinctive packaging and in the case of the SAA-2N, being first with a 4" offering. Since the Tindie store was first to market, I would have thought the opposite would be true.
Hugen also asked Gabriel for permission to manufacture and sell his SAA-2 offering, and if any royalty arrangement was required. I wonder how many other Asian manufacturers extended the same courtesy.
I wish much success to Gabriel and her sponsors with V2 and any future products, but the open source model is a tough one. I would do like the current v.3x NanoVNA-F and the new tinySA product: release the firmware opensource and delay releasing the hardware schematics until a return on investment is realized. It won't stop the Asian cloners but it should slow them down long enough for your product to establish a foothold.
Just my opinion, which with a dollar might get you a cup of coffee.