Based on idly counting laptops at conferences and other gatherings it seems plausible. Yes some of those macs are dual booting Linux, but most are running OS X (based on highly unscientific and statistically weak observation) . I won't dare to estimate numbers, but if you ignore developers working on operating system and desktop based projects, I wouldn't be surprised if OS X is moving towards becoming single most popular OS among the remaining open source developers.
I wouldn't be surprised if OS X is moving towards becoming single most popular OS among the remaining open source developers.
This assumes a shrinking pool. Open Source development is happening at a higher rate than ever before, and the number of Open Source developers and users is higher than ever before.
Yes, Apple has seen a dramatic increase in market share, but before that Windows laptops were abundant at Open Source conferences; before a few years ago, running Linux on a laptop was a harrowing and challenging experience, and most people (even developers) simply could not make it all work. I'm only on my second "fully functional under Linux" laptop, and I've always bought laptops with Linux compatibility in mind.
Apple happens to make the nicest laptop hardware, and Mac OS X happens to run best on it. And, for many tasks, particularly tasks common to laptop usage, Mac OS X is an acceptable substitute for Linux in ways that Windows never was.
To counter anecdotes with more anecdotes, I went to a code camp a few weeks ago, and there was an overwhelming number of laptops running Microsoft OS's. When I pulled out my mac book pro one guy actually commented on it. I saw one other person with a Mac -- it was dual-booting Windows XP.
Of course, I couldn't tell you how many of the participants are open source contributors.
Among developers as whole I agree that Windows as huge percentage of the market share and that that probably won't change. But among open source developers I think it's different. For various historical reasons most open source development targets Unix and Unix like systems as a primary platform and OS X is currently the most popular unix like platform.
