SF/VA gave Linus and ESR stock. I believe ESR and several others were on some sort of community advisory committee to them. Part of SF's problem was that they didn't want to pick winners so much as create and facilitate "community" they had multiple choices for different tools they hosted. They had build servers and such as that seemed at the time like problem space (how do you know if your code runs on Itanium?) They made, what at the time was, an unprecedented effort to engage community and not be evil.

Ultimately someone needs to pay some bills though, a few transactions later and this seems remarkably far from their start. It's embarrassing and shocking.