When someone says "you don't need to apologize" it implies an apology is customary/necessary given the situation but the wronged party has decided to forgo formalities and just wants to move past the wrong and move forward with making it right.
Richard basically says "you don't need to apologize, just implement LVFS". This implies that the wrong which necessitated an apology was not shipping LVFS which is not the case. The only apology they might owe him is for not notifying him of the reason why they chose not to ship LVFS after spending time with him investigating using it.
This situation is like spending the day with a car salesman and then leaving without buying a car when the salesman takes a potty break. Then the car salesman runs a TV commercial that says "<you> wasted my time. I don't need an apology though, just buy one of my cars."
If that's the case then the matter should be closed. System76 was under no obligation to ship with LVFS support and it slipped due to other constraints.
I've been reading through posts on Reddit seeing if I could get a better understanding of the timing of what happened, if anything it's worse now but it seems that Richard's principal contact at System76 held off on notifying him until the release was finalized and is no longer with the company. (https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/8i6swc/system76_and_...) It's unclear if he left before or after the release.
Judging by the all of the inaccuracies in Richard's blog post about the timing of announcements, nature of the application, and the platforms it supports, which all reflect poorly on System76 and benefit his argument; I'm inclined to agree that this is a FUD campaign to shame System76 into supporting LVFS. If you take into account his blog history of shaming companies (e.g. Razer), and his speaking about himself in the third person on reddit; Richard really sounds like a self important twat who is trying to strong arm everyone into using his software.
Richard basically says "you don't need to apologize, just implement LVFS". This implies that the wrong which necessitated an apology was not shipping LVFS which is not the case. The only apology they might owe him is for not notifying him of the reason why they chose not to ship LVFS after spending time with him investigating using it.
This situation is like spending the day with a car salesman and then leaving without buying a car when the salesman takes a potty break. Then the car salesman runs a TV commercial that says "<you> wasted my time. I don't need an apology though, just buy one of my cars."