That's not what happened. uBlock Origin was originally (heh) uBlock. Gorhill, the developer, got sick of endless hordes of people posting github issues about unblocked ads (an issue which should be directed at blocklist maintainers), so he gave the uBlock project away to some teenager.
It turned out that the kid didn't have the skills to continue the project. He basically ported the addon to Safari and put a donation beg message up on the website. Gorhill soon returned to the project, but was unable to get the rights to it back, so forked it as uBlock Origin. IIRC this was in 2015 or so. Ever since, Origin has been the only adblocker worth using.
> He basically ported the addon to Safari and put a donation beg message up on the website.
No, he _created_ the website. That’s why I wrote “scammy website”. The domain name was registrated on April 18, 2015 [1]. The homepage has since changed, but at that time, it was begging for donations [2]. It had a donorbox campain, since taken down, that asked for ridiculous amounts such as "$25: Covers hosting the uBlock website for one week".
I rather doubt that, as much of uBlock non-Origin's userbase is comprised of people who installed it by accident instead of uBlock Origin. Its only real value is in its name.