And you'd trust him as much regardless? What if it were a $300,000 yearly contract? Would you trust him to speak for the community regardless of who was paying him and how much?
I don't really understand your objections to all this.
I don't have to trust Gavin, I can trust the source code. Gavin's not the only one who understands what the code does and how it works. If the CIA, or any other TLA-organization, tries to inject some suspicious code, there are enough programmers involved that the bad code will be quickly spotted.
And if the community feels he no longer speaks for them, then the community can easily speak up and say that he no longer represents our viewpoint.
I think some people in this thread have been reading too many spy novels.