The NetBSD Project's Goals

A project has no point if it doesn't have goals. Thankfully, the NetBSD Project has enough goals to keep it busy for quite some time. Generally speaking, the NetBSD Project:

provides a well designed, stable, and fast BSD system,
avoids encumbering licenses,
provides a portable system, which runs on many hardware platforms,
interoperates well with other systems,
conforms to open systems standards as much as is practical.

Some more technical ideas about where we would like to take NetBSD over the next N years are described in our roadmap.

In summary:

The NetBSD Project provides a freely available and redistributable system that professionals, hobbyists, and researchers can use in whatever manner they wish.

People often ask for a list of differences between NetBSD and other freely available unix systems. It would not be appropriate to try to explain the goals and philosophy behind other projects here - we suggest you check each site for their goals, and make your own decision.