> You make it sound like FreeBSD's code got all closed off and hidden away when it got wrapped into OS X. FreeBSD's stuff is still available openly and can be studied.
I think I was pretty precise in this criticism. Yes, FreeBSD's code is still there, but it hasn't been contributed back to by Apple, and (partly) as a result of that it's been growing less relevant over time; to the point where I would no longer describe FreeBSD as having a healthy community. In contrast, Linux is flourishing.
"at the last FreeBSD devsummit I attended, the people Apple sent were begging us to take more and the holdup was FreeBSD developers (myself included) not being sure that we really liked the solutions OS X had developed." http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3560947
"This keeps being brought up, the whole apple not contributing back to FreeBSD, but I would urge you to please look through FreeBSD's CVS history to find all of the places that Apple HAS indeed contributed back (I've made several comments with links to such sources on HN before)." http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2083877
and (partly) as a result of that it's been growing less relevant over time; to the point where I would no longer describe FreeBSD as having a healthy community.
I'll freely admit that I'm no expert on the BSD world, since I'm a Linux user myself. But I'd question whether or not there's any real research that demonstrates that the BSD community is less "healthy" (depending on how you define that) than the Linux community, because of the license. Heck, I'm not even 100% sure I believe that the BSD community is less healthy, but even if that were shown conclusively, how do we know it's the license and not some other factor(s)? I mean, the BSD community has had different challenges and issues, and a different culture, going back at least to the days of the AT&T (USL) lawsuit[1].
I think I was pretty precise in this criticism. Yes, FreeBSD's code is still there, but it hasn't been contributed back to by Apple, and (partly) as a result of that it's been growing less relevant over time; to the point where I would no longer describe FreeBSD as having a healthy community. In contrast, Linux is flourishing.