That's debatable...
"Hmmm this company has been making these switches for many years and people are still buying them. Let's make some exactly the same, even using the same colours so we can fool people into thinking they're the same and make us some money! Oh yeah..."
"Oh hey, there's this company that makes poor quality keyboards and sells them to unsuspecting gamers through marketing BS... Let's partner with them to make an 'improved' version of our switch which is actually just the same as before so we can take advantage of their BS marketing and make even MORE money... Oh yeah!"
I mean if you're developing a new mechanical switch why make it exactly the same as the competition unless it's to get overflow sales through customer ignorance.
I admit that the lack of supply from Cherry has helped Kaihua's case, but it's still not what I would consider "ethical", just because it's "legal".
Have you ever interacted directly with Kaihua? You seem to have inferred quite a bit about their motivations, but I’m not sure your inferences are justified.
Note that Cherry MX switches have been almost impossible for some keyboard vendors to acquire at reasonable prices in the last few years, because Cherry either can’t keep up with demand or has a broken distribution system. (To the point that some companies were buying up old Cherry keyboards and desoldering all the switches to put in their own keyboards.)
From the perspective of a mechanical keyboard vendor, would you rather use an alternative source of switches, or just give up altogether on making your product?
It seems to me that Cherry has entirely failed to innovate on keyboard switches in the past 20 years, and their (IMO somewhat mediocre product) only hangs on because all the other keyswitch vendors got entirely out of the business when rubber domes took over. Cherry itself mostly markets rubber dome and scissor switch keyboards, with mechanical keyboards as an afterthought. The common prices of MX switches are absurdly high relative to production costs (though I hear some chinese OEMs can get Cherry switches for much cheaper, <20 cents/switch).
I personally think it’s great that Kaihua is breathing some new life into a stale market, and even trying to make some tweaks to improve the design. I wish they’d picked a better source switch (like SMK switches or Hi-Tek “space invaders” maybe), but I’ll take what we can get. Maybe some competition will force Cherry to improve their game.
