Many companies hire people to contribute to the kernel. Torvalds is the name we remember but there are many others. And that is the kernel. There are also comp

Many companies hire people to contribute to the kernel. Torvalds is the name we remember but there are many others. And that is the kernel. There are also companies like Red Hat and Canonical that make money through their work (more) in the userland. The people that they hire all make money from FOSS. Edit: For example, look at the “Most active 5.10 employers” list here: https://lwn.net/Articles/839772/ https://lwn.net/Articles/839772/