Generally speaking: not these days, and not for a long long time. Mauro, for instance, worked for Red Hat at the time. It’s of course possible to be unpaid and work for Linux, but I believe it’s much more likely that one is employed by a big tech corpo and they maintain the kernel as part of their work.
I would not work with or even for someone with such an attitude, not even for money. Ok, do it yourself, bye. Got better places to be.
Are kernel maintainers not unpaid volunteers?
Generally speaking: not these days, and not for a long long time. Mauro, for instance, worked for Red Hat at the time. It’s of course possible to be unpaid and work for Linux, but I believe it’s much more likely that one is employed by a big tech corpo and they maintain the kernel as part of their work.