It may be more like saying they support open source in the same way companies rushed to say they are green, for their image. The plethora of VPs is partly a sales thing, so that every client gets to meet with a VP. Just like how every sales person is a director or similarly inflated title at other companies. Hopefully one knows this before taking such a job!
Edit: After RTFA, it seems to be 2.5 things:
- Crowdsourcing ideas while getting everyone to conform to their platforms
- Image improvement to appear innovative
- Speculating: monetization of old code that doesn't actually work anymore