[phire]

Boards don't micromanage to that level (or more, they shouldn't)

There might have been an explicit mandate that Unity's pricing structure should be changed, but more likely it was just an explicit or implicit mandate that the Unity division should produce more revenue (or profit).

The actual details of how to achieve that mandate would be left up to Riccitiello and his management team.

My interoperation is that while the board probably agrees with the need to change Unity's pricing structure, Riccitiello is being ousted for the poor implementation with a proposal that generated so much backlash and then some pretty poor handling of that backlash.