People are not complaining that they didn't have a say. Most people I've read seem to understand the reasoning behind the initial decision.
What the complaints are about are not about John's decision to leave 5by5 but about the dickish way he decided to do it.
Being a bigger dick afterwards by implying he can do whatever he wants with his podcast (won't even go into how bad it looks that he sees TTS as "his" podcast and not the job of the two, regardless of him being the star host) doesn't help.
The wording of the announcement and the hyperbole he lavishes muleradio with make the whole thing even worse.
It seems that he thinks of podcasts like late night TV - where the audience is just an abstract statistic.
In Dan's response above he makes a reference to drive-time radio talk shows and the sense of relationship (albeit one-way) that comes from that medium. He sees his audience as individual people whereas John only sees the audience as a revenue source.
It's Gruber's answer to the HN thread & tweets of last week.