The SparkFun folks are cool. Back when I was a broke college student, they sent me free electronics kits. I massively respect them for that.
I'm surprised AdaFruit did something wrong here. They frequently blog about their stances on issues and seem to try to take the moral high ground on a lot of issues.
I'm guessing to get ahead of any sort of speculation on why Sparkfun stops carrying their products? Perhaps also to get ahead of Adafruit publishing a similar public statement with more/conflicting details?
You don't actually know that for a fact.
Next we'll see Waveshare and Seeed Studios have a go? Strange happenings.
This aspect is not very surprising, it is usually moral high grounders who end up found to be doing something wrong, people like to compensate and try to put down others when they know they are in the wrong.