The potential risk to ZFS created by the shift in its userbase
The nail in the coffin was Delphix switching away from Illumos for similar reasons the author cites in another article.  As they drive most of the complex feature development directly with staff developers, and by virtue of having Matt Ahrens on staff drive a lot of the leadership and organization of ZFS, it makes sense to follow their lead as the repo of truth and lower the barrier to entry (illusions-gate wasn't working out).<p>Since FreeBSD support is going to be merged directly into the ZoL repo, ZoL devs will see the FreeBSD CI build results and it will be a lot closer to a unified upstream than the past.  Being a downstream instead of integrated into the source of truth made feature development a laborious two way sync and communications were spread over many mailing lists and bug trackers.  I think this move will be good for both communities, companies like iX Systems will help get trim across the finish line in ZoL.<p>In terms of shifting userbase, FreeBSD might even win in terms of ZFS revenue or other metrics like shipping systems due to FreeNAS (would have to spend a few hours researching the ZoL companies business models since a lot of the work is subsidized by the US Government via LLNL).  I don't think there will be any tectonic shifts in userbase, there are still pros and cons to both Linux and FreeBSD in different areas and being behind in ZFS wont be wont be a con for either now.