Yes! It was so huge in the ISP space back then because trying to run something like NNTP on Linux at the time was just not a great experience for customers. Indy ISPs aren't really a thing these days I guess, but back then it was a really strong market for FreeBSD.
With heavy use in Netflix's CDN resulting in something like more than 15% of internet traffic being delivered by FreeBSD, that's some kind of success I imagine.
If anyone wants to learn (as opposed to arguing), the papers on Netflix's TLS offloading work are a fun read.
And say what you will, something like 20% of all internet traffic has a FreeBSD endpoint. And doing 400Gb/s of encrypted streaming from one box is quite an accomplishment.
I would argue the reason someone like Netflix or any of the other large orgs using FreeBSD come there is for the simplicity/cohesiveness. If you're looking to do something like in-kernel TLS or something, way easier on something smaller, documented, and with an OS devel team that will likely incorporate your work in future releases.
(not in a snarky way, I want the story!)