OpenBSD Review at DistroWatch
jpkunst writes "Robert Storey at DistroWatch com has written an in-depth and favorable review of OpenBSD: OpenBSD - For Your Eyes Only. 'The first OpenBSD memento I ever saw was a T-shirt with a picture of a cop chasing a script kiddie. That image remained etched in my mind for well over a year before I finally got my hands on a copy of this fine OS. Now that I have it installed on my machine, I only wonder what took me so long.'"
non-trivial to whom? as a linux dork maybe 5 years ago, i installed BSD on a friends laptop without ever reading a single thing about BSD. He asked me if I would, then handed me the cd's. A little while later it was up and running.
non-trivial to MS-Windows users, Mac users, and Linux initiates maybe. But 5 years ago, I was barely above the status of linux newb. Ok, so it wasn't exactly trivial to do at the time, but easy enough to do without documentation.
Still, your point is well taken.
Keep in mind that all the BSDs share code with eachother. FreeBSD and NetBSD have imported OpenBSD's PF. NetBSD has imported OpenBSD W^X. All of the BSD's share various internals and device drivers.
There have been 300+ committers to FreeBSD in the past year. I'm guessing Open/Net/DragonFlyBSD have 1-3 dozen developers each. Apple has a bunch of developers. All combined, the BSDs are doing pretty good.
Since each BSD has a different focus, the developer has a choice of which fits their style best.