It seems the person who resigned here was on the Rust core team, and had been involved in Rust for quite a long time (https://internals.rust-lang.org/t/announcement-jonathan-turn...).
Just feels like more open source drama tbh.
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https://twitter.com/__phantomderp/status/1662235332375347202
In line with that, the comment above is asking for some reason that could explain why someone who has invested so much time in something would leave so abruptly. A person who has worked on a project for so long derives (and provides) many benefits for having been involved for so long, and even when people change course, they don't typically do so this abruptly without a proportional reason. Hence, the mystery.
Not sure how I’d react in his exact situation, but once trust and mutual respect are gone, so am I.
FWIW, the quoted thread makes it sound like the actual conference planners were no more than messengers here, so it may be fairer to summarize as ".. over capricious meddling in conference planning" or something like that.
One explanation for this sequence of events is that the conference planners had since found a new compelling topic reflective of the project's direction to be covered in a keynote speech, in which case the natural topic to replace is one that discusses a "possible"/hypothetical idea. I'm sure there was a better way for leadership to handle this, in particular around communicating their intentions, but this shortcoming seems much more likely a case of incompetence rather than malice towards the speaker, given the lack of information to support the latter.