BSD user here. Of course there is porting occurring, but this is the nature of open source, is it not? Oftentimes, the BSD devs will take whatever hardware specs they can get and code something from that. OpenBSD frequently writes drivers that are orders of magnitude smaller than comparable Linux drivers, while getting the same functionality. NVIDIA drivers are but one example. Some hardware vendors are generous with hardware specs for OSS, most are not. OpenBSD, as an example, will not have any GPL'd code in the base OS, as it's not truly free. Ports are another issue.

> will not have any GPL'd code in the base OS, as it's not truly free

That's a disingenuous way to put it. The GPL is a free software license. It is "free" as in libre by all common definitions of "free" in regards to software.

The GPL is not compatible with the BSD dev's preferred license, which is much more likely the reason they avoid using such code.

By all conventional definitions, the BSD and GPL licenses are "truly free [software licenses]."

You're welcome to argue that the BSD license is better (because, for example, it lets sony create derivative playstation OSs without providing that source code to their users, ensuring their users have less freedom than if it were linux) or that the GPL is better (because it would prevent the previous), but they're both free licenses.

> will not have any GPL'd code in the base OS, as it's not truly free.

"My freedom to lock down someone else's code is more important than my user's freedom to have access to the code."

No idea about other BSDs, but in case of FreeBSD that’s generally just Intel and AMD graphics drivers. All the rest is native.

And this goes both ways - at one point Linux folks famously managed to violate the BSD license when porting some WiFi driver, iirc, which is notable, since it’s not that easy given the licenses nature :-)

I dont understand how ports help / hinder usability of drivers. Could you please elaborate?

They don't. However, they do reduce the ability of the target O/S of the port to claim that it isn't a clone of Linux. The top-level post was complaining that people don't consider non-Linux O/S, and then failed to offer compelling alternatives.

I did not, I stated that nothing has changed: before people only knew PC buckets and Windows, now PC buckets and Linux is the only truth and religion. Nothing else exists. So the more things changed, the more they stayed the same. That's progress!

I also listed several alternatives just a few comments below, but apparently you didn't read that. You know of the old saying "you can bring a horse to the water, but you can't make him drink"?