FreeBSD won't pause anytime soon.
In my opinion, UNIX philosophy, a lot of simple small components working together as one && everything is a file is still, after 40 years, the best way for computing. I mean, if hardware still works on simple I/O operations, why should it's software interface be abstracted throughout tens abstraction layers?
Anyone that ever tried kernel programming under Windows knows what i'm talking about. Year ago i tried to "port" some of my knowledge and mechanisms from FreeBSD kernel programming to WinNT. After downloading half of gigabyte of various tools, headers, god knows what, i spend several hours trying to figure it out. The thing is so abstracted that you need to be some sort of a Van Gogh to figure it out easily.
Sadly, Linux is trying to copy Windows in every aspect possible, the ends justify the means. GNU Holy Crusade against Microsoft monopoly grabbing every chance to convert Windows users to Linux, they actually started replicating Windows philosophy.
What i'm trying to say is, for us that love the UNIX way, FreeBSD will always remain the top choice when it comes to compromise between key factors; stability, security, hardware support, user application support. We don't have drivers for Taiwanese video cards and every Skype camera you can get for $20 like Linux, but we also don't have a bloated kernel.
If we don't get some mega computer architecture revolution, UNIX will still remain the best paradigm around, for us computer scientists and people who actually want to know every detail of computer's work, sacrificing the clickerty-click-next-next-finish fast way for the sake of security.
That's why FreeBSD will be around for a long, long time.
