On the other hand, isn't the FreeBSD user base shrinking and its former users going to Linux?

I am not really sure if I can follow. FreeBSD despite its title never had something to do with Free Software. BSD has a different history and it's "own licence". Being more consistent in its licence is a good thing particularly in contrast to Linux FreeBSD is a full distribution with user land. I would even think that you can without much problem publish a GPL version of FreeBSD if you like. I think you might have to leave out some CDDL stuff. FreeBSD has its value as an appliance OS (e.g. for firewalls or NAS) and FreeBSD has profited also from vendors contributing back: it is just another ecosystem . Personally I totally respect GPL and AGPL licenced software. The sad news is that without any fix in law, AI rewrites will kill GPL eventually, but then again also proprietary binaries can be decompiled and modified, so maybe there is still a win for freeing software in the game.