ThoughtPolice was born because I kept needing to use the same VMware images over and over again. A google search later, and I had found no place which provided a variety of VMware images. Thinking others would find these images useful, I made them public. Over the months, more and more VMware images were added, and the range expanded to include FreeBSD, evolving into the current day website.
Less than one year since launch, the website has led to more than 370 terabytes of downloads through BitTorrent alone, without which we would be unable to handle the bandwidth requirements. Recently SourceForge was added as primary source for the web downloads, allowing people who cannot use BitTorrent to still use the website.
The website is aimed both at sys admins like myself who need to get an operating system up and running very quickly, and people who just want to try Linux or FreeBSD out.