It won't die, though, it seems stagnant. It has a user base that's dedicated to it, that's not going away. The biggest thing, may be features that people need and aren't on FreeBSD. There aren't many of those. The other thing, is FreeBSD is better at its core, but it's a popularity contest. I believe FreeBSD can break out, and will do so when a few features are updated. It's already doing so, as Bluetooth and HID devices are getting better, and video drivers have already improved greatly.
One reason a few people don't stay on FreeBSD was about Samba.
https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=263874. From that, it says that the version changed so much making it difficult to port. TrueNAS has it, because the upstream ported it to there. We assumed it was an implementation that worked with Sambas on other machines, but we didn't realize how old the existing port was as Samba wasn't discussed enough, and the incompatibility was only mentioned on here until more recently.
Another reason would be for GPU processing not having to do with video display.
Not everyone needs those features. Also, if someone's not sharing data with a Windows machine, they should just use NFS, and be made aware of Samba's state. Looking at it this way, most users don't need Samba, and most users don't use GPU processing that's not for their video display. We don't notice what specifically may be lacking on certain ports, unless we try them, dig into them, document it and discuss it for others to see.
The main strength is those who like a good system and like to set it up themselves, and for professionals who don't need those features. FreeBSD needs to get stronger on a few niches, even if it's on the newest features it has.
It may be odd to see me say this, as I'm one of many who are dedicated to use FreeBSD. I thought this for a while, but didn't write it until now.
