I'm not claiming that any specific companies are registered in China or operate from China. It's possible that because many Chinese users are using Zorin this is why their community has taken a different stance on free/open software licensing.

EDIT: Either way, my main point is that Zorin is responsible for how they redistribute the source code and other modifications to the software they sell. They refuse to do that sometimes, and they gaslight their community / the open source community.

Residential VPNs are already so cheap.

Forking it makes it easier to convince your flock of sheep that you must pay for GPL software. It also gives them a lot of opportunity to inject their own happy accidents into there.

I have a long history with ZorinOS, and I will make it very short.

They are grifters.

The simple fact is that they release open source software, much of which is licensed as GPL. They modify these programs from time to time to be compatible with ZorinOS, etc.

They refuse to release any of their sources sometimes, and when they do, they put takedowns and ban people from their community because they believe their paid-for ISOs are closed-source - which is not true.

If you think I'm wrong, mistaken, lying, etc. grab any ZorinOS ISO and go put it on a ZorinOS community website, such as Reddit and sit back and watch.

It's worth mentioning I find all of the ZorinOS downloads using DHT scan. I haven't touched them in a while, but I still find the entire situation perplexing. I have to imagine part of this issue is that the Chinese community is newer to FOSS and doesn't understand these longstanding ideas.

What used to be very useful was to get the signal to noise ratio. When I had problems it was because they had installed amplifiers at various parts of the line and it eventually added up to a problem with amplifying too much noise.