We oppose the total domination by Linux, not Linux as one of the serious options. We also think that different opinions on technical or organizational topics are actually a good thing - and that still at the end of the day we're all friends in Open Source. Also there are various efforts within the Linux ecosystem that without any doubt fit our idea of "non-mainstream" (e.g. distributions based on musl libc, systemd-free, etc.).
One reason for this project was that we believe in choice. Another is growing importance of resiliency. The TOR project for example has called more than once for more BSD nodes to be added. Large companies like Verisign deliberately use more than one OS to avoid possible impacts of an entire platform having problems. Others, too, may like the idea of not putting all your eggs in one basket.
While a lot of organizations strive towards a homogenous environment (which is certainly easier to run as you don't need to hire people who specialize in a much wider skill set), we embrace diversity. We do so because we expect that the gain is well worth the price (which we are of course well aware of). Forcing software to go through the ordeal of running on multiple platforms in production is very valuable - procedures like this are known to expose bugs early (among other things) and thus help to increase overall quality.
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(Revision: 2023-05-25)