Yes, they are accountable (and I'm actually surprised at how many people seem to believe that they are not), but they are not without power. Legal and practical are not always exactly overlapping and even if the board may not ultimately hold practical power (even if they believe they do) legally speaking they do and executives function at the pleasure of the board. If the board holds a vote and the bylaws of the company allow for it and the vote passes according to those bylaws then that's that. That's one good reason to pack the board of your billions of dollars worth company with seasoned people because otherwise stuff like this may happen.
Afterwards you can do a lot about it, you can contest the vote, you can fight it in court, you can pressure board members to step down and you can sue for damage to the company based on the decision. But the board has still made a decision that is in principle a done deal. They can reverse their decision, they can yield to outside pressure and they can be overruled by a court. But you can't pretend it didn't happen and you can't ignore it.
I'm not saying the board doesn't make decisions or that the board is powerless, or that their decisions are not enforceable or binding. That's already known to be true, there's no value in arguing that.
I'm saying the _ultimate_ decision is made by the people with the money, inevitably. The board is allowed to continue to make decisions until they go against the interests of owners. The whole point of a board is so owners don't have to waste their time making decisions, so instead they pay someone else (directors) to do make them on their behalf.
Start making decisions that go against the people who actually run the place, and you'll find yourself in trouble soon enough.
In fact we are very much arguing that thing in the same way. But you do have to get the minutiae right because those are very important in this case. This board is about to - if they haven't already - find out where the real power is vested and it isn't with them. Which is kind of amusing because if you look at the people that make up that board some of them should have questioned their own ability to sit on this board based on qualifications (or lack thereof) alone.
Which I later restated as "Start making decisions that go against the people who actually run the place, and you'll find yourself in trouble soon enough." (emphasis added) -- which hopefully you agree is a clear restatement of my original comment.
Meanwhile you said
> This is wildly incorrect. (...) you are just simply factually incorrect. (...) But until he is re-hired Sam Altman is to all intents and purposes fired.
But I never claimed he wasn't for all intents and purposes fired
Yet you did claim I was "wildly" and "factually incorrect" and now you're saying "we are very much arguing that thing in the same way" but "you do have to get the minutiae right". To me, minutiae was sufficiently provided in the original comment for any minimally charitable interpretation of it. Said differently, the loss of minutiae was on the reader's part, not the writer's.
Regardless, lack of minutiae is not comparable to "wildly" or "factually" incorrect. Hence I was not either of these things. QED.