Besides portability, NetBSD does have a lot of attractive technical features, including a cross-platform source-based packaging system, the rump kernel concept

Besides portability, NetBSD does have a lot of attractive technical features, including a cross-platform source-based packaging system, the rump kernel concept where drivers can be run in both monolithic and microkernel-esque fashions, an extensive kernel-level authorization system through kauth(9), a very intelligently designed driver framework with lots of low-level components abstracted into machine-independent interfaces (which OpenBSD and FreeBSD later integrated themselves), and so on. NetBSD has also been the first to introduce new features like reforming the rc boot scripts into the more modern rc.d system. Lots of people (esp. Linux users) have this impression that all Unix-likes besides Linux are hulking dinosaurs stuck in the old ages, but this couldn't be further from the truth.