[toyg]

The problem with BSDs was not much the lawsuits but the fact that they didn't figure out a governance model that could scale. Linux had open mailing lists and low barriers to entry, BSDs had "core" cliques. Linux begat git, a distributed VCS, when BSDs were happy with the likes of CVS, where control is rigidly centralized. Etc etc.

[arp242]

git didn't appear until much much later; and maintainers who can pull in code is not so different than a "core clique" with a commit bit: it's till a relatively small group of people who decide what does and doesn't get merged – it's more of a workflow thing than anything else. Of all the possible factors this seems like the least convincing one.