While Linus Torvalds supervises code changes and releases to the latest kernel versions, he has delegated the maintenance of older versions to other programmers. Major releases as old as 2.0 (officially made obsolete with the kernel 2.2. 0 release in January 1999) are maintained as needed, although at a very slow pace.
who is the current maintainer of the linux kernel ​
Linus Torvalds