Hi Rick;
Some excellent points my friend!
However ....
1) Sybase's support agreements included a USP option. SAP has dropped that. So upgrading will be a pay-as-you-go scheme. I don't think this adds any value to an SAP Support contract. IMHO - USP's should be included ... especially if SAP wants to rejuvenate PB!
2) Just spoke to X-SVP of SAP Jason Lovinger last week. He was the one championing PB last year and can be seen driving the PB Webcast last November 2012. He has now left SAP's employment and has no idea who is championing PB any more. 
3) SAP should allow us access to the PB Engineering team. I still have direct access to the Rational Functional Tester engineers at IBM for my PB problems. Just because SAP is another big company should not mean that it's customers should be walled away from the product development staff!
=> Your point about PB in relation to SA is spot-on! Not only that ... but IT shops, IT consultants, software houses, etc will also come to the same distrust for SAP products like PowerDesigner, ASE, IQ, MobiLink, Hana and any other product that PB can interface to! SAP should not under-estimate PB's reach in the IT community! 
The last point I would like to make as well is that Bruce's petition states releasing a new PB version by Q1 2015. I think that if SAP does not do this by Q1 2014 - most IT shops, software vendors, etc will start their migration plans away from PB. By the time 2015 comes around it will be too late for PB ... all we will be hearing are the crickets (as you so well stated).
Regards ... Chris