> Who exactly are you thinking of that needs a job but doesn't have one?

That is not your claim. Your claim is that they "are on the payroll of one of the big tech interests or a foundation funded by them". Which is simply not true.

You can easily find several maintainers of these projects doing this as their part-time hobby project, have cut a deal at work or simply don't work at place that funds Linux development.

I'm not going to call out individual I know the situation and/or their employment history.