And that's fine. There's a boon in having a completely customized, finely-tuned sports car that you built yourself. This is only useful if you're skilled enough to build your own custom sports car. For most people, myself included, we need a little help and we have to hope that someone knows how to, competently, hook up an engine and a suspension and a transmission and rack and pinion steering.
I, too, love the freedom to be able to pick and choose my options in Linux. There are multiple BSD projects but if one said "we're migrating to systemd" I'd be as outraged as any Linux user who's suddenly told "we're only going to offer KDE from now on." Some of the users would be happy with that choice, some of the users would be outraged. And rightfully so. It's better, in my opinion, for users to be able to make their own decisions. But there's a caveat.
I point it out because, frankly, many users aren't capable of making their own decisions. Many users need someone to put the pieces together and make it all work. I'm sure someone out there has downloaded the Linux kernel source code and built it and downloaded the Xfce or KDE source code and built that, too, and is running a completely custom Linux system and I'm glad he's smart enough to be able to do that and the feds haven't kicked in his door to arrest him for doing so because the licenses all agree with each other that he's allowed to do what he's done.
And yes, he could just install a BSD and get the same thing for a lot less effort. And just as I felt when I was a teenager, I liked that option, too. I still do. But that's the crux of the matter: control over the components versus functionality of the overall system. Make a decision.
There are projects that take control away, but that provide functionality: Debian. Devuan. Ubuntu. Linux Mint. MX. Arch. Dozens more. Smart folks who know how to work a compiler take the bits and bobs and get a working OS. I, myself, and dozens of other forum users never could accomplish this. And there are plenty of newbies and neophytes who love MX and fail to appreciate that MX Linux isn't just this singular, magical thing; someone had to bring the kernel and the bootloader and the UI together and make it all run and build an ISO that gives a working live session but also there's an installer and they both have a word processor and a browser and so on and so on.... it's staggering how much work goes into making a thing people can download and use for free. To put it simply, we are shocked.
Maybe you fall on the cathedral side of things. Maybe you fall on the bazaar side. Maybe you don't care which side you're on, but you're just a cheapskate and you want the one that costs less. Maybe you care about scale and, whatever you do, you want to be able to do it a thousand more times. Or you're creative and you want to do something unique and then distribute it to fans or followers. BSD will let you do that, and charge money if you like. GPL will let you do that, but you have to outline how to you did it so people can do the same thing you did, for free.
That's the agreement. That's the new cathedral and the new bazaar. With BSD you can take code, change it, and release it without sharing the source, for free or for money. With GPL you can sell the code if you want, but you have to, have to, HAVE TO publish your code. Where you fall between the cathedral and the bazaar largely depends on what you want to get out of the experience. Are you an entrepreneur, or an artist? Unlike folks who work at IBM and Oracle and Microsoft and Apple and HP and all the other proprietary code corporations, you have options.
Edit: typo
... In mindset, and also in very concrete official bureaucratic / taxation terms, lol.
