Perhaps - that way leads the debate of "what counts as moral/ethical action for a business". That's a goodly pool of quicksand there, and it was not my intention to step in it...
I'll restate and rephrase below, in a manner to sidestep that particular puddle.
True. However, I am not sure it is relevant - simply because I have never seen or heard any cogent evidence that there is any "matter of survival" at hand. Does anyone here have any real evidence, or even solid argument, that a 3rd party product ever took a real bite out of WotC sales? If not, then there's no "matter of survival". Third party publishers do not seem to be any threat to WotC.
On the other hand, I am not sure there's much hard evidence that 3pp were a particular asset to WotC's overall bottom line, either. We here, who are a small group of atypical gamers may collectively love and buy things from 3pp, but I am not sure that translates into significant benefits to WotC. The original intent of the OGL was to have it be a major benefit, but I strongly suspect that the benefit turned out to be questionable.
So, lacking evidence that it is either a strong benefit or detriment, it is reasonable to expect the upper management to be... uninterested. Current progress is consistent with this simply not being a major priority. Rather than being quick and clean, it is turning into a slow, complicated beast. That is normal corporate behavior, no?
So - don't ascribe to particular intent what can be reasonably explained by apathy
