Here's my thinking behind it: the variable in question is called __FreeBSD_version so it seemed meaningful to have 'version' in the name. In the conversation of issue CHEF-4637 @btm mentioned in hindsight __FreeBSD_version should have been 'platform_version' which I agree with. The other reasonable option I considered was 'freebsd_version' but I felt even FreeBSDers would expect that to be the OS version (what is currently 'platform_version'). The decision to name the kernel variable 'os_reldate' is an odd choice by FreeBSD itself since in make files it commonly refers to it as OSVERSION. I suspect this is an artifact from the old days (and I mean old; circa FreeBSD 2, early to mid 90s) when FreeBSD was versioned by year and month. I suspect to the average FreeBSDer, 'os_reldate' will hold no meaning at all. So given the choice between 'os_version' and 'os_reldate' I think 'os_version' bears more relation to __FreeBSD_version while admittedly neither of them really hint at FreeBSD. But I'm cool with changing it :)