The fact that money didn't necessarily reach people doing the work, doesn't mean money wasn't thrown around above their heads - which inevitably conditioned their choices. Novell didn't pay peanuts for SuSE, for example; nor did Ubuntu build a mobile OS for anything but to intercept money from mobile manufacturers. It was fairly plain to see that developers hired by those companies were given marching orders at various points; and because they inevitably were the core developers, projects steered accordingly.

(I would also add that, certainly in KDE circles, there was also a bit of a cultivated aura of rockstar developers around these fulltime hires, with folks making big calls without ever accepting they might be wrong... until several years (or decades) later.)