[SpecialistK]

I would say the BSDs and Linux differ in two major ways (to a neophyte, at least):

1) is that BSDs use a monorepo - the kernel and userland are all developed by the same team in the same place, rather than GNU coreutils on top of the Linux kernel, packaged by a number of different distros.

So each of the 4 major BSDs (Free, Net, Dragonfly, and Open) are full operating systems with their own teams and priorities. They share code and history (Dragonfly is a fork of Free, Open is a fork of Net; all are derived from 4.4BSD in the early 90s) but have diverged into their own niches. GhostBSD, TrueNAS, opnSense, and GhostBSD are downstream "distros" of FreeBSD.

2) is the license: whereas Linux and GNU use the copyleft Gnu Public License, the BSDs use a permissive license. This means that BSD code can be used in proprietary software (including but not limited to Sony's Playstation OSes and Windows(!!) [ever wonder why the Windows HOSTS file is in such a weird location...?]) and merged into Linux. But GPL code cannot be added to BSD.

Copyleft vs permissive licensing is a bit of a religious disagreement in the FLOSS world.

[ls612]

OK at least the idea that it’s mostly sectarian disputes makes sense.

I do wonder though, if most Corps want as much leverage and rights for themselves, why did Linux largely “win” in the enterprise world.

[SpecialistK]

There's a few theories:

* the legal disputes with AT&T meant that Linux was an earlier Free and Open Source Unix-compatible and gained momentum

* the leadership of the respective BSDs are more conservative or "picky" with their merges, requiring sufficient documentation and cross-architecture support

* the BSDs are 4+ different projects rather than one upstream Linux kernel, making contributions harder

* permissive licenses mean that a company using BSD code does not have to announce or share their changes to customers, making BSD adoption harder to notice (unless you read all of the fine print)