I can't speak to the current organizational structure but historically there's Linus and a few others at the center (e.g, Greg KH) and then you have circles of

I can't speak to the current organizational structure but historically there's Linus and a few others at the center (e.g, Greg KH) and then you have circles of trust extending out. Someone is the key person for subsystem A and they trust someone below them for driver or widget B and you're expected to pass your patches through these channels and by the time they make it to Linus's inbox you should have a branch/patch with commits that follow all the rules and are ready for a final QA inspection, essentially. Sometimes people and corporations with enough clout manage to slip by the normal processes and this is the result.