As is often the case, I found points where I agreed (at least partially) with the author, and others where I completely disagreed. And that’s perfectly fine.

There was one point, however, where my disagreement was total. I'll quote a part of the article here: “The FreeBSD community is...difficult. What I mean by this is that it feels much like the average Linux community in the early 2000s: it looks down on others (in this case Linux users), it appears rather unwelcoming and at times downright toxic. Any time you mention anything vaguely related to Linux you'll inevitably cause somebody to go on a massive rant about how FreeBSD is better than Linux.

It also seems there's a general dislike for change, even if said change is for the better. It feels like a form of "tech boomerism": change is bad because it's not what we're used to, even if the end result is in fact better.”

Frankly, my own experience has been the complete opposite. The communities around the BSD systems are open, friendly, and extremely approachable - though, of course, everyone has their own personality, and toxic people can exist within these communities as well. When I started becoming more active in the BSD community, I received a completely unexpected welcome. The BSD conferences I've attended have the atmosphere of a family, of close friends. No one shows up to boast, but to discuss, to dialogue. In a word: to build.

But I picked up on two details from the excerpt: “mention anything vaguely related to Linux” and “tech boomerism: change is bad because it’s not what we’re used to, even if the end result is in fact better”. This suggested something to me that was later confirmed when the author mentioned the “three firewalls competing with each other” within FreeBSD.

They don’t compete with each other. They coexist - and that’s a completely different thing. This gave me the key to understanding the previous part as well.

This isn't a battle. We aren't in a ruthless commercial arena where different solutions copy each other to get ahead, hoping to attract "users" (better: paying customers) from the other side. And unfortunately, this is something that has been happening in many "mainstream" Open Source communities for a while now. It's a loss of the Open Source philosophy - of doing something for the pleasure of it, to have something different, and to be open to contributions from others, as well as the idea of making what you create public and free. Whether it's with licenses like the GPL or like BSD, MIT, etc., the spirit is to say: “Here it is. If it’s useful to you, take it. If you want, contribute. Otherwise, you can move on; you have no constraints or obligations.”

I often see curious Linux users arriving in BSD communities, and that’s fantastic. The spirit is almost always positive, exploratory: “What can the BSDs do for me?” And sometimes, that turns into, “What can I do for the BSDs?”

But this isn't a religion - you don't need to choose one - and you can use different OSes based on your needs. I happily use Linux, in its various distributions, for some of my workloads. I'm writing this post on a mini PC running openSUSE Tumbleweed, on btrfs, and it works wonderfully. No BSD, at the moment, has adequate support for this machine. I use Linux, and I'm happy with it.

The purpose of the BSDs, like other Open Source operating systems less adopted than Linux and its distributions, isn't to "win" or to "emulate" but to be themselves. So, arriving in a BSD community and saying "but on Linux..." as if it were an example to be followed, has, over time, become an attitude that is not well-tolerated.

BSD communities value stability - and these communities are much, much smaller than those around projects like Linux and its distributions. It's therefore inevitable that some things will lag behind or that they won't want to embark on projects that might leave something unfinished and malfunctioning. Unfortunately, this sometimes happens anyway. It's better not to seek it out deliberately.

Desktop use for the BSDs has never been a primary focus, particularly for FreeBSD and NetBSD. To judge them on this metric alone is, therefore, extremely limiting and, in a sense, unfair.

So, coming back to the article I read - I understand some of the author's points of view, but calling the FreeBSD community a form of tech "boomers" or "toxic" because it doesn't want to follow Linux's example is, in my opinion, a flawed approach to an autonomous, different operating system.

Let's try to shake off the aggressive, competitive, and monopolistic dynamics when we approach the Open Source world. The plurality of completely autonomous choices is a richness for everyone. Monoculture is always harmful and, in the long run, destructive.

It reminds me of the time when all smartphone manufacturers were trying to copy the iPhone as much as possible. All the phones were the same: either originals or copies, but all extremely similar. How boring.

Gradually, things changed. Over time, minimalism took hold. "Less is more" became the mantra in many sectors. We saw it in electronics (a philosophy Apple rode to great success), in interior design, in construction, and in architecture. We got low-impact homes and devices that were ever more powerful yet consumed less and less energy. And yet, in the one field that should embody efficiency and logic more than any other - computing - the exact opposite seems to have happened. We've progressively made things more complicated. Simple tasks, like hosting a website, have become, in the eyes of many, jobs that require complex and heavy stacks - stacks that consume resources and electricity just to get the base system running.

Operating systems are becoming increasingly complex, bloated, and packed with features that are useless to most people. Even the Linux world, which was often born under the banner of modularity and lightness, has in many cases followed the same trend. Just think of modern web stacks that, even on Linux, require containers, orchestrators, and complex build systems merely to serve a static page.

And that's why I've decided that my blogs, at least for now, will be hosted entirely on a VM that costs 1 Euro per month. By using efficient operating systems (like NetBSD, in this case), it's possible to run the whole setup with excellent performance on very few resources.

This isn't a matter of necessity - I have powerful, underutilized servers at my disposal - but a matter of choice. It's a small act of computational minimalism. I want to demonstrate, just as I have done and am still doing with FediMeteo, that you don't need to invest in extreme resources, powerful (and expensive) hardware, and complicated stacks to perform simple tasks. Tasks that today, for whatever reason (that's a rhetorical question, and the answers range from commercial interests pushing new solutions for already-solved problems to curriculum-driven development), are instead handled on oversized infrastructures.

As I like to say, it's like needing to buy some salad from the shop down the street, but instead of walking, cycling, or, at most, taking your car, you take a semi-truck.

Sure, it works.

But it makes no sense.

The harshest critics weren't senior developers or security experts. They were junior developers - often the exact ones most at risk of being replaced by the tools they were defending so passionately. Kids fresh out of bootcamps telling me I was "stuck in the past" for suggesting they should actually understand the code they're shipping to production.

The pushback wasn't just in the comments. Someone I don't know shared my original post, "Vibe Coding Will Rob Us of Our Freedom" on Reddit's r/programming. It was removed by moderators for being "clickbait" title and an "unpopular topic". It seems I'd touched a nerve. Some of the feedback I got elsewhere made me think even more.

It reminded me of something, and it took me a while to put my finger on what. Then it hit me: Stockholm syndrome.

Here were people defending - almost evangelizing - the very thing that could make them obsolete. And not just defending it quietly, but attacking anyone who dared suggest there might be risks worth considering.

I've been thinking about this pattern a lot lately, and once you see it, you can't unsee it. It's everywhere.

There's the gig economy worker who gets aggressive if you criticize the platform that pays them below minimum wage and offers no benefits. "It's freedom!" they'll insist, while working 70-hour weeks just to pay rent. The open office enthusiast who swears the noise and lack of privacy make them "more collaborative", even as their productivity tanks and stress levels soar.

Hell, I see it in tech all the time. The developer who defends the surveillance capitalism of their favorite platform. The startup employee who brags about their "unlimited PTO" policy - you know, the one where nobody actually takes vacation because there's no clear boundary between work and life.

But why does this happen? Why do we become cheerleaders for our own demise?

I think it's because recognizing a threat means admitting vulnerability, and that's terrifying. It's much easier to reframe yourself as an "early adopter" or a "forward thinker" than to face the possibility that you might be getting screwed.

There's also the sunk cost thing. Once you've publicly embraced something - especially if you've built part of your identity around it - backing down feels like admitting you were an idiot. Better to double down than face that uncomfortable truth.

And then there's the illusion of control. When you're using a powerful tool, you feel powerful, even if you're actually giving up agency. The junior dev cranking out AI-generated code feels like a wizard, even though they couldn't debug a simple loop if their life depended on it.

But here's the thing that really gets me: every time we choose the comfortable lie over the uncomfortable truth, we pay a price. The programmer who never learns to actually program. The worker who accepts worse and worse conditions because they've convinced themselves it's "flexibility". The person who trades privacy for convenience without really understanding what they're losing.

It's not just about individual careers or rights. It's about collective autonomy. Every time a generation stops understanding the tools they use, they become dependent on whoever controls those tools.

I'm not saying we should reject all new technology or that change is always bad. But there's a difference between tools that empower us and tools that replace us. Between systems that make us more capable and systems that make us more dependent.

The trick is having the guts to look honestly at which is which.

Last week I was talking to a friend who runs a small construction company. He was telling me about how all the big contractors in town are pushing "smart" building systems that require constant cloud connectivity and subscription services. Meanwhile, he's still using techniques that have worked for decades, tools he can fix himself, materials he understands completely.

"They keep telling me I'm behind the times" he said. "But when their fancy systems go down, who do they call?"

Maybe being "behind the times" isn't always a bad thing. Maybe sometimes it means you still own your tools instead of renting them.

The next time you catch yourself getting defensive about something - really defensive, like you're personally offended that someone would dare question it - maybe pause for a second. Ask yourself: am I defending this because it's actually good for me, or because I'm scared to imagine alternatives?

Because the first step toward freedom is always the same: admitting you might be wearing chains.

And the old saying comes to mind, "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM".

This is a mature person who has already experienced the problems associated with closed platforms. They've already gone through experiences like, "Starting next month, we're shutting down, and you need to find a new solution", panicking because they were unable to identify and manage a quick, specific action plan.

I bring these things up, but the answers are always the same: "But all the business/marketing/sales courses say..." or "It's common practice in sales today...". And they're right, it's true. They are a good salesperson; they close good contracts and also sell "optional" services - they know how to do their job well. And, like a good salesperson, they deliver the final line: "It doesn't matter how good a solution is, what matters is that it sells. And what sells is what people know, offering a sense of security, of belonging to a group, because for the masses, the prevailing motto is: if everyone's doing it, it must be right".

And I realize that I am a terrible salesperson. Because this person is right - selling those services is the best way to make money with less effort, less responsibility, fewer headaches. You take an external service, add your consulting markup, and provide it. From that moment on, all problems are related to the service. And if the service has issues, it's a Service (with a capital S because... hey, everyone uses it, if they're down, it must have been inevitable!), so no one can accuse you of not having done enough.

I open LinkedIn and take a look. Thousands of profiles waving MBAs, courses, and sales certifications. Words, words, words... but, I wonder, how many of them truly understand what they are selling. Almost none, I suspect – as a skilled salesperson once told me: "It doesn't matter what you sell, the important thing is knowing how to sell it the right way".

Therefore, I am and always will be a terrible salesperson. Some clients appreciate the enthusiasm and passion, but fundamentally, I can't sell what I don't understand, what I don't know how to do, what I'm not completely convinced of. And clients are happy precisely because they appreciate this alternative approach, less focused on profit and more on a considered choice of solutions based on solving a problem, not just balancing the books.

Some don't understand it. Others tell me I could sell myself much better. But that's who I am, and when I turn off the light at night and go to sleep, I know in my conscience that I did what I could to provide a good service.