Сферический ВК в вакууме
>Russian defense contractors don't contribute to Linux out of the goodness of their hearts
1. citation needed
2. can we stop this "defense contractor" bs? Baikal produced some MIPS and ARM-based SoCs for internal market, including SOHO segment. Russian MoD bought some of these, just like any other customer, and that's about it. *Real* Russian defense contractors operate under very strict NDAs and they would never ever make their efforts public. Let alone public for American NGO aka Linux Foundation, they'd be prosecuted for that.
3. this particular developer got his maintainer's status not for his Baikal upstreaming work but for volunteering work on projects unrelated to his employer and in his free time. This is pretty clearly described in his LKML post, which you apparently skipped (but decided to make judgements anyway)
@czero @AdrianVovk @LaF0rge While individual contributors might decide to contribute to a free software project "out of the goodness of their heart", no commercial entity, whatever their business actually does. (defense or other sector, no matter)
Rather, they see the positive potential of utilizing the combined efforts of other developers as well as their own in maintaining and improving whatever it is they make their money from.