They could act as a check against one person going absolutely insane and destroying a company and hundreds of jobs in the process. (except in obvious cases like Musk or Zuckerberg of course, where they basically run everything and the board never pushes back)
He's listed as a BDFL, but perhaps without the Benevolent [1]?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benevolent_dictator_for_life
I get that it rubs people the wrong way when private equity is taking competition and making money off your work. But such is open source. Burning the whole thing to the ground seems extreme.
The Board should step in.
I use wordpress at a non-profit and would go to some meetups and went to a word camp. Wordpress always seemed about people solving problems related to making a website. People were pretty nice, and Gutenberg while controversial was already done by the time I was using wordpress. Its pretty good for a in web layout tool. I think a lot of good will is being used up here. Wordpress survives on its community and plug ins, not on its technical merits.
Being open source it can always be forked. If only there was a company that has revenue that could take a fork and run with it...