[ginkoleaf]

Dismissing the FreeBSD community as contrarians feels uncharitable. I can think of at least a few other contributing factors for the increase in popularity of late:

1) Linux's popularity has enlarged the pool of users interested in Unix-like operating systems. Some proportion of users familiar with Unix genuinely like FreeBSD and the unique features it offers.

2) The rise of docker and the implosion of VMWare has driven an increase of interest in FreeBSD Jails and the Bhyve hypervisor.

3) Running a homelab is a popular hobby. ZFS is popular for RAID, and pf is popular for networking.

4) Podman being brought to FreeBSD: (https://freebsdfoundation.org/blog/oci-containers-on-freebsd...).

5) Dell, AMD, Framework, and the FreeBSD foundation committing $750,000 to making FreeBSD easier to use last year: (https://freebsdfoundation.org/blog/why-laptop-support-why-no...).

6) Apple announcing that they're bringing the Swift language to FreeBSD this year.