There is basically no independent upstream (other than a handful of people). Essentially all the kernel developers work for the companies that have distros plus organizations like Intel, Qualcomm, etc. that do a lot of device enablement.
I agree in general. In this particular case, though, a good fraction of the work was done by me and tglx. I'm independent. Tglx is sort of independent.
This is not to diminish the work done upstream by less independent people. Dave Hansen, in particular, is the one who actually got the code to function.
