I'm with you in terms of reasoning, but to continue a bit with devil's advocacy: if you look at the Froyo leaks, they haven't been substantively different -- at least, not in any way that would take a single developer more than a week or two hammering away at the code. If even one dev were doing that, it'd be a very small price to pay for a very big PR benefit -- that mere 1% can have an incredible impact on any company when they're sufficiently pissed off. If there were no leaks at this point, we'd probably be seeing media headlines on this issue or, worse, legal sabre-rattling...
So long as people keep up with the "oh it'll get here eventually, gosh darn it" ethos, they can take just as long as they please. If they've got consumers willing to accept "we're working on it" for over half a year now when other devices are about to upgrade to *2.3*, how long do you suppose those consumers will continue to wait? Keep throwing a few "leaks" at 'em, and VZW will have some people using the Fascinate patiently for a bloody decade.