I’m not sure if I get your point completely. But I understand, that we loose information if we merge identical things named differently on editions.
What we need is something like name variation, then we could combine publishers and authors which are identical and still mention how they were named.
For authors it is already planned: https://community.metabrainz.org/t/author-aliases-no-method-of-crediting-works-under-pseudonym-s/489236/2. Maybe @mr_monkey can tell us, if something similar is planned for publishers.