>Is it me, or does it seem that the BSDs are really losing more and more mind share as time marches on

Well BSD is dying was said already 15 years ago, BUT the project should be more responsive, an example:

You send in a patch with a updated port, and you wait 3 month until it's in the tree, in the meantime already a new version is out. I think if the users make the work and send in patches (just with a changed version-number and zero or nearly zero dependencies) some porters @ freebsd should act much quicker (some are super fast and helpfull but not as many), otherwise they will change the os or make there own fork of the package tree like i do.