Also they have all the stuff like FUSE, used to be pretty big in the Xen world (mostly for the high level portability), recently developed a [pretty nice SMP focused network filter](https://www.netbsd.org/~rmind/npf/ were the first to implement various drives (including implementing support for Apple hardware, before an OS from them officially supported it), their network stack I think still holds the the record for the fastest intercontinental file transfer ever done, etc. They also are pretty secure, which is mostly due to a strong quality focus.
But I think their devs are too busy achieving all those things, rather than hyping the OS, so that's why I have to. ;)
EDIT: Oh and despite all that research and so on, they always remained very pragmatic and non-political. That combination is really rare I think.
* [pkgsrc](http://pkgsrc.org/), a super portable and flexible ports system that is used per default on NetBSD, SmartOS, Minix, some Linux distributions, at DARPA, etc. Support for over 20 operating systems (as in actually different OS kernels) * [Lua Scripting in the kernel [PDF]](https://www.netbsd.org/gallery/presentations/mbalmer/fosdem2...) * [A PGP implementation](http://www.netpgp.com/faq.html) * [A test framework for operating systems](https://wiki.netbsd.org/tutorials/atf/) * [Binary Interfaces for Linux, FreeBSD, SCO Unix, Tru64, Win32, Solaris, SVR4, Ultrix](https://www.netbsd.org/docs/compat.html)
Also they have all the stuff like FUSE, used to be pretty big in the Xen world (mostly for the high level portability), recently developed a [pretty nice SMP focused network filter](https://www.netbsd.org/~rmind/npf/ were the first to implement various drives (including implementing support for Apple hardware, before an OS from them officially supported it), their network stack I think still holds the the record for the fastest intercontinental file transfer ever done, etc. They also are pretty secure, which is mostly due to a strong quality focus.
But I think their devs are too busy achieving all those things, rather than hyping the OS, so that's why I have to. ;)
EDIT: Oh and despite all that research and so on, they always remained very pragmatic and non-political. That combination is really rare I think.