I doubt they were involved in the decision, https://twitter.com/mitchellh posts a lot about stepping away from leadership to become an engineer again.

I thought Mitchell stepped down from an exec role a while ago.

When someone gets a well-deserved black eye, most folks would rather put on concealer makeup than be forced explain how they got their shiner. I doubt they want to draw attention to how badly they just pissed off the open source community.