> OpenZFS, [...] OpenSSL is not a BSD upstream project in anyhow is this a BSD upstream project in any shape or form

Upstream as in it's included in the distribution but not primarily developed there. I thought that is the correct way to specify something that you use but that is from somewhere else? OpenZFS grew out of OpenSolaris and is now used from ZFS on Linux, illumos (SmartOS and others) and FreeBSD. Same fore DTrace.

> Very little from what I can tell, unless you count projects which did not originate from one of the BSD's. Anything you can point me to ?

Just a quick Ctrl+F on the release notes https://www.freebsd.org/releases/10.0R/relnotes.html#new - make from NetBSD, a driver from OpenBSD. I guess there is more flow for bugfixes and patches. It's not so uncommon afaik but I'm not sure.

> Based upon your distro choice, this isn't harder in Linux either, nothing you need to venture over to FreeBSD for.

I've never claimed that? It's hard for systemd components. It's also clear that Linux is clearly better fitted or the only choice for a lot of use cases due to hardware and software constrains. I don't mind Linux :)

> Well there is quite a difference here as systemd as a project compared to FreeBSD does not ship binaries, they ship a tarball which is then configured, compiled and deployed by a distro, which in turn decides what options to use as default for their userbase.

IMHO defaults matter a lot. Sure, I can also turn it off with a small edit but then I need to remember the machines where it's on or off and I'm often don't have root. The problems due to the task limit are also not so great and this is in Ubuntu 16.04: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11675129

It's nice to have release notes that are reliable and and predictable behavior. It's a different attitude.

> Whatever default systemd chooses, it will be right for some and wrong for others, but each distro will most likely choose the option best suited for their userbase (or face complaints).

Yeah, not all agree with this approach. This is is totally understandable from the point of systemd as they want to move fast and get stuff done but usually that means that you don't know what to expect when you login somehwere - you basically have to lookup systemd defaults related to the distro release or worse patch-version. If you just want to deploy something and make it run stable and fast it's a PITA. Often you don't have control over the distribution.

> But who decides what is 'good reasoning' ? That's just a nonsense statement, with practically any change, some people will think it's good reasoning, and some will think it's bad reasoning.

How is this a nonsense statement? Philosophers thought about this for thousands of years, it's the foundation of science. How about something you are able to reason about easily that is fully understandable and easily to modify, composable and lacks hidden complexity and side effects?

Sure you'd write software for nuclear power plants with other constraints than a personal website. In the former case you should focus on maintainability and ease of understanding and correctness - while in the second case the primary goal is likely to get it done as fast as possible to your personal liking.

I think operating systems are kind of similar. You can't always throw everything in VMs or containers that can malfunction. Sometimes it need to work. Surprises are bad.
Due to the changes surprises happen with systemd - that's the unavoidable problem.

> Nope, I'm a developer.

That's a different perspective and I'm sure that you experience systemd as a godsend for a lot of stuff that eases your life. Just different priorities. On the desktop I'm also happy to have some systemd based system that does the magic for me but with servers a lot of people have different expectations.