Obviously you think it's a waste of time- the burden is on you to explain why not. Not why you don't work on it yourself, but why you think people who are working on it shouldn't be.

I think it's a completely fair thing to politely ask why people are spending their time on this. Surely they have somg goal in mind.. Maybe they have some bigger goal, like commercial OS's tuned to the RPi or something that only BSD systems can do? Or maybe it's something simpler

I talk to people who can't understand why I spend exorbitant amounts of money on my Harley or jump on it and ride for hours ever chance I get, only to end up right back at home, where I started.

My girlfriend doesn't understand why I spend so much time in my office typing white letters into a big black box.

I don't understand why some people spend large amounts of their {money,free time} collecting stamps or coins or playing golf. To me, all of these things are boring as hell.

In each of these cases, however, there's no need to (have to) explain why. Any answer (including "because it makes me happy" or "because I want to") is completely valid and acceptable.

Of course that's a fair thing to ask, but that post wasn't asking that question. That post wasn't asking a question at all, it was clearly intended as an insulting statement in the form of a question.

I think there is an implied frustration with the fragmentation of "the open source effort", which is ... understandable. It should have been written more diplomatically. It seems to me to be a pervasive problem on anonymous forums.

Agreed. Do you think that was a polite question?

what part are you questioning? Why FreeBSD vs Linux?

before you downvote him further, consider that he has no idea the merits of running FreeBSD vs Linux.

They are getting down voted because of the phrasing of the "question". If they had asked:

    "Why would you want to install FreeBSD instead of Linux? Are there advantages?"

They would have a got a list. Putting "who cares" in any part of the question sort begs for a down vote rather than an serious answer.