The big thing for me is that the board didn't say anything in its defense, and the pledge isn't really binding anyway. I wouldn't actually be sure about supporting the CEO and that would bother me a bit morally, but that doesn't outweigh real world concerns.
But maybe for further revolutions to happen, it did have to die to be reborn as several new entities. After all, that is how OpenAI itself started - people from different backgrounds coming together to go against the status quo.