Wouldn’t the BSDs have happened sooner or later without GNU, and without Linus? I’m grateful for the contributions of both men (who by the way have expressed quite different ideological stances), but I still think it’s an interesting question.
Maybe yes. But BSD was encumbered by the AT&T nonsense for approximately a third of the free software community’s history. That’s a long time to sit around and do nothing.
Edit: grammar.