I'm cynical, too, and I have good reason to be.

I recently bought a Keychron TKL keyboard that uses Hall effect switches. It is, in my opinion, a lovely board to type on and so far I like it quite a lot. (Hopefully, this board with its socketed HE switches will serve longer than the previous board that had soldered Cherry MX Blues.)

It was advertised as being open-source and supporting QMK. Not at some time in the mysterious future, but right then. (And that's still true right now -- the web page is unchanged.)

But it does not have source available. The link for source code on the website lands at a Github page for a completely-unrelated keyboard, and I can't do anything at all with it using QMK. Extensive digging to find the source has resulted in zero positive results.

In the case of this Keychron keyboard, the promise of source code consists of resolute lies more than it does vaporware: The source is stated to openly exist, but it does not exist.

A question about this situation to their support email resulted in assignment of a ticket number, followed by silence.

So yeah, anyway: The cynicism is valid.

Keychron is a real company with a good history so it isn't unreasonable to expect it and thus you shouldn't be too cynical. However don't confuse that with don't be cynical at all - many companies with a good history have canceled projects, and this is still vaporware.

If they plan on developing it in the open and taking early contribution / feedback could be a valid (and good) reason.