Top members are all companies that have made bank abusing their users to no end. Linus Torvalds refuses to upgrade to GPLv3 because he doesn’t see the value for enforced freedom restrictions. He is a “freedom for me, but not for thee” type of person. Hurd on the other hand will never suffer this issue because of it being a GNU package.
The kernel is filled to the brim with nonfree firmware blobs. These blobs can be updated/modified by the vendor but not by the user, by that definition, they are nonfree. You could say that Linus Torvalds chose the “pragmatic” option. You wouldn’t be wrong to deduce that none of the companies on that board member list would EVER contribute to the kernel if they had to also respect the user’s freedom.
But that’s the thing, Torvalds still sold out. Scandals like the proprietary Nvidia driver (which will now get its home in nonfree firmware) gets to happen (and will continue to happen) because the precedent was set. Torvalds historically didn’t even want to liberate his kernel until he was convinced by the work of the GNU project to do so.
Torvalds is the poster boy because he does not threaten any sort of status quo. No one is immune to propaganda, and the Torvalds “Open Source” media narrative is still the dominant one. The GNU/Linux vs. Linux controversy is propelled by this Faustian pact.