Having lots of corporations involved in something doesn't protect the direction it goes in. Corporate interests could easily, for example, try to start adding in closed source blobs or providing support for people doing so. In fact, when Linus is gone, they probably will.
Software projects do seem to benefit from having firm voices empowered to say "no". Committees are incapable of doing that. Sooner or later they end up stuffed with friendly people who compromise their way to yes. That isn't an unacceptable outcome, but it'll be a different and probably worse project when that happens.
I suppose there are counterexamples - like Debian. But they have some very interesting social traditions and they don't let just anyone in to the club.
Commitees will be formed, instead of linux for the people, there will be corporate committees, then of course the diversity and quota ones, and in the end, "the one that pleases the sponsors"... The end results? Instead of Linus showing the middle finger to Nvidia (again), they will issue a statement, that "without contributers nvidia, we're unable to... yada yada", and binary blobs (or worse) will become part of the kernel.
None of the core lieutenants would be doing that work if their interests wasn't aligned with Linus'.
The culture around kernel development is strong, at the risk of scaring away newcomers. But a tight knit community also means it probably wouldn't change much even without Linus.
Software projects do seem to benefit from having firm voices empowered to say "no". Committees are incapable of doing that. Sooner or later they end up stuffed with friendly people who compromise their way to yes. That isn't an unacceptable outcome, but it'll be a different and probably worse project when that happens.
I suppose there are counterexamples - like Debian. But they have some very interesting social traditions and they don't let just anyone in to the club.