He's not unaffiliated, he's a Director of Engineering at Sentry [0]. Whether that means he has a say in who got paid I don't know, but I can see how that would feel a bit off to OP.
Edit: I'm also not 100% sure which projects OP was referring to. I just looked through the Google sheet and can't find anything by him, but I could have missed something.
[0] https://lucumr.pocoo.org/about/