[rubber_duck]

>I wonder if they could have closed more deals if they'd promised to do something like this.

I think continuation of development and community growth even after they closed down is what gives people confidence - and there's no practical way to show that upfront (assuming that having a big/visible community outside of your core company is not viable for such project in that ammount of time) - re-licencing just the first step to that. They proved what happens in a "worse case scenario" but I don't think you could have done it without going trough it.