Everyone at the time told them what would happen, and then it did; so yes, they could have known, because all this was predicted.
It turns out single-vendor projects at Apache work out this way, particularly when the single vendor is IBM. In fact, this had all just occurred with Apache Harmony (their Java clone, which Android's Dalvik was based on), which was going great guns until IBM pulled out, leaving a ghost town.
This was all foretold by people who'd seen what had literally just happened.
It turns out single-vendor projects at Apache work out this way, particularly when the single vendor is IBM. In fact, this had all just occurred with Apache Harmony (their Java clone, which Android's Dalvik was based on), which was going great guns until IBM pulled out, leaving a ghost town.
This was all foretold by people who'd seen what had literally just happened.