This is not a good trend

Trademark law exists as much to secure consumers’ right to honest information about the provenance of products, as it does to secure rights-holders’ intellectual property. If you’re going to alter free software enough that upstream won’t endorse your distribution, you just have to change its branding so it’s clear to users that you’ve done so, and if your modified version is actually better then that works to your advantage. It’s a system that generally benefits everyone except those who wish to, effectively, deceptively piggy-back on someone else’s work. And the free software movement has generally always recognised this and made use of trademarks as appropriate: it’s certainly not a new trend.