>The price of running BSD in production in a responsible way is that you need a fairly sizable team of >4-6 people. Probably salary cost alone would run close to a million per year. That's a big commitment to run anything and hiring is going to be tough.
This is flat-out wrong.
I single-handedly managed a fleet of over 100 FreeBSD servers running in various data-centers all over the world. 90% Nginx, 10% Apache. Mostly Wordpress websites. The 'brand' was #3 in the world for it's niche. $Million+ revenue.
So, what happens when you sleep and any of your 100 servers go down; or you are on vacation; or you get hit by a bus; etc. and they need somebody with BSD skills to fix it? Don't tell me that doesn't happen.
The words "single handedly" are a dead give away: you're a single point of failure unless there's more than 1 of you.
It might be easier for you personally. But for a typical organization finding 4-6 of you would be a challenge. And unless they would, it would be a problem waiting to happen.
The problem you describe is the same for any org that needs sysadmins. Linux or Windows can go down as easily as FreeBSD, and a single operator would be just as much a point of failure.
What should an organization that cannot afford a full operations team do? This is not an OS question.
Let me throw in a personal anecdote. I live pretty much in the middle of nowhere, in a city you've never heard of, in a relatively poor country. (The typical dev salary here is around $1k per month, 3× less that for juniors). Even around here, practically every IT person I know has some Linux experience. System administrators of various sorts have loads of it. Meanwhile, most have never heard that the BSD family exists at all, and almost no-one has any experience with it.
Of course, it isn't representative at all of what happens in places that actually matter (like California..), but still.
> Linux or Windows can go down as easily as FreeBSD, and a single operator would be just as much a point of failure.
That wasn't the original point though.
The problem presented is "The market for FreeBSD operators is smaller than the market for Linux operators". Which was countered with "I, as one guy, could manage 100s of freebsd servers".
That does not address the initial problem. There are a LOT more sysops people skilled in linux operation vs BSD operation. That means choosing FreeBSD limits your pick of people that could reasonably manage a fleet of servers.
The problem is that it is a self-amplifying logic, a self-fulfilling prophecy of disaster: you pick Linux because it's easier to hire, so there's less job offers for FreeBSD, so job seekers (and schools) focus on Linux, so it's harder to hire FreeBSD sysops and easier to hire Linux sysops.
That's how we create software mono-cultures, end up being forced to use mediocre software, and how searching for vulnerabilities becomes very profitable (ransomware etc.). Companies should think about the ecosystems they live in, not only about their sole immediate profit.
> Companies should think about the ecosystems they live in, not only about their sole immediate profit.
I contend that companies ARE thinking about the ecosystems they live in when they pick the boring things everyone else is doing. That's what drives picking boring technology is the ecosystem surrounding that tech (Libraries, articles, experts, education, etc). Ecosystem is more than just the diversity of choices.
Software doesn't live in a bubble and we are long past the days when an interesting language feature can trump modern infrastructure.
A company that decides to write their app in Erlang because it's neat and interesting will be at a disadvantage to a competitor who decides to do the same project in java. Even though erlang has a lot of neat features, java has a giant ecosystem and support structure.
While you may have a point that its harder to find a BSD person, I would say because BSD has a cathedratic model, it is much much easier to get up to date with it. While Linux has sporadic documentation, you have to go scavenge through the entire internet looking for answers, everything is in one place, the freebsd forum. ports itself even comes with a file containing bugfixes and notes, telling you what breaks and what precautions to take with each software. The bazaar model is hard to grasp and learn from. GNU has pushed their business model to be books. It means you have incomplete documentation (man pages) everywhere. You either buy the books to know how things work internally, or hopefully someone somewhere jotted down your problem/solution, albeit in SO, a ML, some book or who knows where.
This is the truth right here. With the skills you have as a Linux person you can easily migrate to (Free|Open)BSD.
I started with Debian in ~1994'ish (USB didn't work yet, it was probably the stable branch at the time). I had DECADES of experience with Linux.
It was easy to transition to *BSD. This is the beauty of Unix. I still get a brain fumble when I'm bouncing between systems and type the wrong command on OpenBSD vs FreeBSD when I'm doing something common like installing or searching for software. The core mechanics work everywhere. Knowing the right question to ask when searching gets you that last 10%.
How do I restart the $X service on: (OpenBSD, FreeBSD, RedHat, Debian, Arch, ...etc)
(Free|Open)BSD are more simple, while Linux feels more automagical in the way services are managed. I dislike SystemD for this reason and prefer the BSDs.
This is flat-out wrong. I single-handedly managed a fleet of over 100 FreeBSD servers running in various data-centers all over the world. 90% Nginx, 10% Apache. Mostly Wordpress websites. The 'brand' was #3 in the world for it's niche. $Million+ revenue.
In my experience, BSD is EASIER then Linux.