Comment by astrange

That would be how Linux works, but BSDs are a centralized development model where you actually do have to leave if you disagree with the project direction. That and given limited resources, you obviously have to focus them to get anything done.

Besides that, I'd say the current approach is just wrong because it's obsolete. FreeBSD sells itself as a "server/embedded OS", but the assumptions are those of basically someone who owns a single computer at home and makes random sysctl tweaks to because they read on a mailing list it was faster. Which is the kind of person who's an OS developer or a small-business/academic sysadmin - basically someone who loves being on the computer in the first place and wants an excuse to spend more time on it.

But they should've realized that was obsolete by the time Google released the SRE book (which has a chapter about how you should never make manual edits), and certainly by the time virtualization and cloud hosting became common.

Of course, many people still do think it's fun to own a computer with a silly name and make random sysctl tweaks to it, so they're not going to like me telling them it should be boring and impossible to do. At least there's Docker and Nix though.