"1. What is the best thing about Unix?
A: The community.
2. What is the worst thing about Unix?
A: That there are so many communities."
I can't say i agree. Why are there so many BSD's and why are there even more Linux distros, and why are there so many 'buntus? Well its my opinion that having that many choices is an advantage. I can't stand 90% of the Linux distributions, but some people might think that my choice(Kubuntu) is a bad one, some would say that choosing Linux instead of FreeBSD or OpenBSD is a bad idea. Choice is good, sometimes more choices are confusing, but if you just go for the most popular choices and ignore the less popular ones, its easy to make them. Will we have one unified Unix one day? If it runs gnome i'll switch to vista, no tanks Ubuntu, KDE is MY choice, its good to have one.
The Unix culture intrinsically values having so many choices, which is a consequence, I think, of historically being a platform by programmers/for programmers. Some people are picky about tools, and it encourages them to make their own. It's highly unlikely that it will unify in any real sense as long as its core design attracts people who bristle at the thought of being stuck using anything besides KDE, or GNOME, or Fluxbox, or ratpoison, or dwm, ...
I think it's a really good thing that different distributions tend to focus on particular goals, e.g. security as a design principle in OpenBSD, portability in NetBSD, being available as a free OS (in various senses) with Debian and Ubuntu, etc. (I really don't want this to turn into an argument about different distros; I know I'm trailing off there, I had a harder time summarizing Debian). Anyway, different foci lead to different discoveries, bugfixes, etc., but due to the pervasive Unix culture they are shared.
Still, that avalanche of necessary choices will probably keep it thriving in different niches from a system designed to have a consistent face for everyone. It's harder to teach people to use, harder to market, etc.
I can't say i agree. Why are there so many BSD's and why are there even more Linux distros, and why are there so many 'buntus? Well its my opinion that having that many choices is an advantage. I can't stand 90% of the Linux distributions, but some people might think that my choice(Kubuntu) is a bad one, some would say that choosing Linux instead of FreeBSD or OpenBSD is a bad idea. Choice is good, sometimes more choices are confusing, but if you just go for the most popular choices and ignore the less popular ones, its easy to make them. Will we have one unified Unix one day? If it runs gnome i'll switch to vista, no tanks Ubuntu, KDE is MY choice, its good to have one.