They did fire him, and it didn't work. Sam effectively became "too big to fire."
I'm sure it will be framed as a compromise, but how can this be anything but a collapse of the board's power over the commercial OpenAI arm? The threat of firing was the enforcement mechanism, and its been spent.
I believe the goal of the opposing faction was mainly to avoid Sam dominating board and they achieved that, which is why they've accepted the results.
After more opinions come out, I'm guessing Sam's side won't look as strong, and he'll become "fireable" again.
To be fair, this attempt at firing was extremely hasty, non transparent and inconsistent.
If they'd made their move a few months ago when he was out scanning retinas in Kenya they might have had more success.
allegedly again, the board wanted Sam to stop doing this, and now he was trying to do the same thing with some saudi investors, or actually already did it behind their back, i dont know