even in a distro, you'll get various syntax variations for instance

Syntax of what?

cli programs, they all have different ways to handle arguments, options, help

ps: another instance, albeit not a BSD strength either, would be data format, every output is different, I, like a few people too wanted some json as pivot representation to cut the thousands of papercuts, that kind of uniformity is what I expect from "system"

Lots (just some? most? I haven't really used it much) of FreeBSD system utilities are using libxo for output, so you can use e.g.

    ps --libxo json

and get json output, or xml/html

I didn't know bsd already adopted it, only heard a few passing mentions. That's great, though, and note that I mostly meant that about linux.