I found out how to make Mattermost be run as an unprivileged user via upstart in CentOS/RedHat 6.
This is the upstart config that worked for me (unprivileged user mmost):
start on runlevel [2345]
stop on runlevel [016]
respawn
chdir /opt/mattermost
exec sudo -u mmost bin/platform
Notice the difference in the last line from the original, found in the documentation for Production Install.
PS: how can I make this finding to be included in the previously mentioned document?
http://docs.mattermost.com/install/prod-rhel-6.html
Thanks