Part of the reason Linux has such a huge number of devs is because the community is welcoming and forgiving of noobs.
OpenBSD was my first unix, and as much as I tried to contribute, I didn't last through their toxic developer community long enough to be a useful contributor.
This high bar is required to keep the system as secure as they want, but the trade off means scaring off devs, which is the real core of the bsd/Linux divide.
Linus is a dick. Theo is a dick. No argument from anyone there. That's the Linux kernel though, and I would argue that has the same problem of scaring off potential devs.
It's the wider community I'm talking about. Mailing lists, forums, etc. It is a pain in the ass to entertain dumb questions and give the same answers over and over, but it's how you turn noobs into developers.
OpenBSD was my first unix, and as much as I tried to contribute, I didn't last through their toxic developer community long enough to be a useful contributor.
This high bar is required to keep the system as secure as they want, but the trade off means scaring off devs, which is the real core of the bsd/Linux divide.