[mbarbar]

I knew it was largely corporations but thought the final call was with Linus/the lieutenant system, and that Linus specifically wasn't beholden to any particular corporation (well, barring binary blobs I suppose). Is that no longer the case?

[pabs3]

Linus is paid by the Linux Foundation, which is funded by corporations. I don't either LF or their funders have any influence over Linus. The funding side of things doesn't seem to matter though, because those corporations contribute directly. For example, there was some DRM enforcement code added to Linux and more recently Intel is trying to get their "software defined silicon" stuff into Linux.