The BSD's suffer from too centralized developement style. In BSD the kernel seems tied to the rest of the distribution. In Linux every piece of software is autonomous. This Linux encourages new distributions and different ways of doing things. At one point the BSD kernels were technically superior to the Linux kernel but Linux use grew more rapidly. I think that this decentralised developement was one of the key reasons.
At some level, centralization is necessary. Many people developing the same software with no or little central control almost always results in spaghetti code - people tend to write code the way they like it as long as nobody forces them to write it like the rest of the project is done. Different coding styles don't matter much, but imagine having two completely different apis for ide and scsi. It's a hell to try to find bugs in inconsistent code, and you don't get the consistency unless sombody forces it upon all the contributors.
A lot of the software that comes with BSD kernels is kernel-specific, in much the same way all Linux distributions have the same software packages that always get installed. Take mount, util-linux, modutils. (If this sounds completely fucked, it's because it was a good while ago I had Linux installed). And as the software's functionality and development is tied so tightly to the kernel it might as well be controlled by the same people who control the kernel itself, getting the same consistency.
The BSDs don't discourage new distributions or different ways of doing things more than Linux does. You are free to at any time take an existing BSD, or parts of it, call it something else and do whatever changes you wish. Remember that once there was only the BSD, developed at Berkeley. Now there are FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD, there's the commercial BSD/OS from BSDi, I've also heard of TrustedBSD and SecureBSD(?). Please, go ahead and fork! (Well, maybe not BSD/OS).
I think that BSD still is technically superior any other operating system family. When ever I need the best stability, security or portability, BSD is the way to go. I think that this centralized development, while still keeping the software free, is one of the key reasons.
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At some level, centralization is necessary. Many people developing the same software with no or little central control almost always results in spaghetti code - people tend to write code the way they like it as long as nobody forces them to write it like the rest of the project is done. Different coding styles don't matter much, but imagine having two completely different apis for ide and scsi. It's a hell to try to find bugs in inconsistent code, and you don't get the consistency unless sombody forces it upon all the contributors.
A lot of the software that comes with BSD kernels is kernel-specific, in much the same way all Linux distributions have the same software packages that always get installed. Take mount, util-linux, modutils. (If this sounds completely fucked, it's because it was a good while ago I had Linux installed). And as the software's functionality and development is tied so tightly to the kernel it might as well be controlled by the same people who control the kernel itself, getting the same consistency.
The BSDs don't discourage new distributions or different ways of doing things more than Linux does. You are free to at any time take an existing BSD, or parts of it, call it something else and do whatever changes you wish. Remember that once there was only the BSD, developed at Berkeley. Now there are FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD, there's the commercial BSD/OS from BSDi, I've also heard of TrustedBSD and SecureBSD(?). Please, go ahead and fork! (Well, maybe not BSD/OS).
I think that BSD still is technically superior any other operating system family. When ever I need the best stability, security or portability, BSD is the way to go. I think that this centralized development, while still keeping the software free, is one of the key reasons.