mrorganic: My theory is that Linux has become "trendy" enough to attract a different type of user/programmer than in the past, one which tends to be less productive and more vocal. Reading Freshmeat (as someone pointed out here) is a good way to see gauge the culture. You find lots of inexperienced (myself included) programmers with minimal abilities, often driven more by ego than technical issues. The joke about the project that has no design and no code (but certainly a project lead) which is looking for programmers demonstrates the "leader looking for a following" mentality.

Fortunately for the BSDs, Linux has become the lightning rod absorbing all of these people due to its exposure and growing ease of installation. The result is the BSD talent pool has not been diluted to the same extent the Linux talent pool. I still believe that there is as much good Linux code as BSD code, but good luck finding it through the daily announcements of KickASS-AIM-0.0.0.3: yet another messenger clone that just started from the [LM]AIM code base and added different colors. (Okay, I made that up, but you get the idea.)

Be wary, however. If BSD becomes the trendy OS of the week, you'll get to watch the last 3 years of Linux history happen all over again. I wish it weren't so, but someone's development community is going to overrun once the lemmings (and the media) get tired of Linux. The next OS to get hit will either be BeOS or BSD, it's too soon to tell which.