They aren’t. From a comment on https://www.reddit.com/r/ublock/comments/32mos6/ublock_vs_ublock_origin/ by u/tehdang:
For people who have stumbled into this thread while googling “ublock vs origin”. Take a look at this link:
"Chris AlJoudi [current owner of uBlock] is under fire on Reddit due to several actions in recent past:
- In a Wikipedia edit for uBlock, Chris removed all credits to Raymond [Hill, original author and owner of uBlock Origin] and added his name without any mention of the original author’s contribution.
- Chris pledged a donation with overblown details on expenses like $25 per week for web hosting.
- The activities of Chris since he took over the project are more business and advertisement oriented than development driven."
So I would recommend that you go with uBlock Origin and not uBlock. I hope this helps!
Edit: Also got this bit of information from here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/chrome/comments/32ory7/ublock_is_back_under_a_new_name/
TL;DR:
- gorhill [Raymond Hill] got tired of dozens of “my facebook isnt working plz help” issues.
- he handed the repository to chrismatic [Chris Aljioudi] while maintaining control of the extension in the Chrome webstore (by forking chrismatic’s version back to himself).
- chrismatic promptly added donate buttons and a “made with love by Chris” note.
- gorhill took exception to this and asked chrismatic to change the name so people didn’t confuse uBlock (the original, now called uBlock Origin) and uBlock (chrismatic’s version).
- Google took down gorhill’s extension. Apparently this was because of the naming issue (since technically chrismatic has control of the repo).
- gorhill renamed and rebranded his version of ublock to uBlock Origin.