The about page says the logos have been available since 2003/2005. It looks exactly like a logo from 2003.. so I don't think it's terrible at the time it was designed... it's just dated.
Old 2007 whitepaper: https://www.ipv6forum.com/dl/white/IPv6_Ready_Logo_White_Pap...
2005 paper on getting the logo cert for the Linux kernel: https://landley.net/kdocs/ols/2005/ols2005v2-pages-291-298.p...
If you look at the approved products page and sort by date, you'll see Samsung, IBM, Cisco, Intel, ZTE, Nokia and lots of other tech companies--software and hardware. So clearly they were involved early on.