I dont know all the details so correct me if i have parts (or all) of it wrong but being used to read (and help writing) these kind of PR's in my former life, it strikes me as Nikon moving a little bit but not all the way towards giving up the right to encrypt the WB. I see it as a corporate dance of Nikon not really giving up the right to the NEF fileformat, but here is a piece of
NIKON-owned code that can let you know what the as shot WB is.
It's a bit like having the cake and eating it. Nikon doesn't give up the right to the NEF format, but everyone that licenses (agrees to Nikons right the NEF Format) the mini dev tool kit can read and use the as shoot WB setting.
I dont doubt that Nikon felt forced to do this. But not because of the complaints from users but because several companies have cracked the encryption anyway and Nikon stood to loose the right to the NEF format. I can imagine Adobe telling Nikon that either they made it available and then there would be peace or Adobe would feel that they would have to "help their Customers" = reverse engineering it too
Compare to the whole discussion of Microsoft not always being ready to give up "undocumented" API's to certain part's of Windows, because it would in some cases enable competitors to reverse enginer larger parts of the Microsoft OS (the view from the Microsoft side)