You're completely correct in my opinion, but I'd like to add one crucial point:

If people are asking/begging for the tool to be open sourced, then they do indeed value it. Otherwise, why would they care if it just withered and died?

They may not have valued it as much as the product was charging for, but that's a different debate entirely. I'm assuming there was some discussion of commercial viability, lowering prices, etc. before they chose to shut down. (You pretty much said this part in your second paragraph, this is the "execution" part.)