So your argument is, in this completely non-contextually relevant example this guy I worked for did not make money on his like-botted website so Mobius membership is bad evidence for a desire for an open PVE experience.
The logic behind your argument is utterly broken.
People choose Mobius (not bots, not friends, not solicited dupes) because they want a PVE alternative to the current PVP open.
As far as a business decision for PVE Open, I really think you should look at EVERY OTHER AAA MMO and see how they handle the partitioning of PVP and PVE experiences. ED player population is far smaller than those offerings, so referencing the mastery of the business decision making by eliminating the PVE open an accessible experience is simply uninformed.
Suggesting there is no lore-based example of a no PVP environment is dead on its face given that solo and PG modes exist.
Now for my sample size one anecdote.
I have three accounts, I participate in Open, PG and Solo on all 3. When at CGs, I participate in a Mobius variant (One has access to Mobius, the second Mobius PVE, and the last Mobius PVE America). The second two accounts are locked out of Mobius because of the PG cap, the third is locked out of Mobius PVE because of the size cap. When any of my commanders participates in a CG, I see the same faces over and over and over (representatives from each server).
My perception is not that the actual active membership in each of these PGs is very small, my perception is that the active members within each PG that participates in CGs is likely small, or that I am instanced with folks that are members of the given PGs that have similar pings / geographic networking profiles. There is a double filtration of an automatically smaller source population as I perceive it.
In summation...
Fundamentally, participation in the Open and PG options identify the desire of players to have a social experience.
There is clear evidence, both from the burgeoning Mobius populations, and from other MMOs that many players desire a PVE social experience.
The truly limiting factor here is not whether Open PVE makes sense, or will it find participants willing to enjoy it. Open PVE would be extremely popular if it were available.
The limiting factor is the capacity of FDEV to execute it.
C&P is a disastrous band-aid that has zero impact on PK behavior - yet it's inspiration and marketing was about making the role of system security and legal consequences be more reasonable within the game society.
Given that FDEV failed to execute C&P effectively, I expect they have an internal understanding that creating an Open PVE environment is simply beyond their ability to create.
I am reminded of the initial quirks of the
Ultima Online environment that the developers had not anticipated. Players killed everything, trampling over the built in ecology. I am certain that FDEV expected that players would police players, without an understanding about how p2p coupled with module engineering, combat-logging, and motivated PKrs would make this impossible.
Though Open PVE would be great, it will never happen for ED. The best we could hope for is a revision of the PG cap so that all of the Mobius flavors could be merged.