Oh I kind of assumed it was made by the same guys actually... I remembered buying some stuff on sparkfun a long time ago and just remembered the spark part of the name.

The core has been around for a while. Don't think there will be any issue at this point.

Very different companies and both have been doing their thing for a bit. A small subset of people may confuse them, but it should be very clear right away from seeing their sites that one is what I'll call a "product based company" while the other is an online store.