Huh, why would they need the unbranded version? The branded version works just fine. It's usually easier to deploy ordinary open source software than it is for software that needs to be licensed, because you don't need special download pages or license keys.

If it makes sense for an organization to donate to a project they rely on, then they should just donate. No need to debrand if it's not strictly required, all that would do is give the upstream project less exposure. For design reasons maybe? But LKML isn't "designed" at all, it has always exposed the raw ugly interface of mailing list software.

Also, this brand does have trust. Sure, I'm annoyed by these PoW captcha pages, but I'm a lot more likely to enable Javascript if it's the Anubis character, than if it is debranded. If it is debranded, it could be any of the privacy-invasive captcha vendors, but if it's Anubis, I know exactly what code is going to run.