Re: The Berkeley Software Distribution

On Sun, 18 Feb 2024 18:27:08 -0000 (UTC), Ben Collver wrote:

A few months after the NetBSD group formed, the FreeBSD group formed.

One wonders why they had to fork off in different directions, and not
continue development from a common base. An overly-centralized development
model, perhaps?

Consider that there are at most maybe half a dozen BSD variants currently
alive, as compared to 50× that number of Linux distros. Yet it is easier
to move among Linux distros than it is to move between BSD variants.

And those Linux distros cover a wider variety of usage scenarios than the
BSD variants can offer. So Linux can offer variety with minimal
fragmentation, while the BSDs suffer from more fragmentation while
offering less variety.