Quoting MLH (mlh@goathill.org):
> > > Essentially, I view NetBSD as the best non-Sun os for complimenting 
> > > Solaris in our environment, but what can be done about integrating
> > > NetBSD with NIS+? Ideas appreciated.
...
> NIS or NIS+ compatibility mode isn't going to fly. We are planning
> on moving to an ldap backend for NIS+ and making that available
> for our OS/X clients.  What would be the best way to access this
> from NetBSD clients - for authenticating and automounting home
> directories?

NIS+ is dead.  It was a good idea with a bad implementation.

NIS is acceptable, but moot.

LDAP is a fine and good answer.

More: There are NIS servers that can use LDAP on the back end (which
I'm looking at because I have SunOS 5.6 machines to deal with along
with SunOS 5.8 and 5.9).   See PADL.com  (their gateway runs on
FreeBSD (3, oddly - may work on NetBSD) and OS X in a month or so).

Another solution you can implements for many maps is that old and
not so crufty Hesiod.  It uses DNS TXT records on the back end by
default (so it scales like a monster) and NetBSD supports it
natively, IIRC.  It's a step back in many ways, but for non-authentation
stuff, it's pretty easy to deal with;  I've had scripts that turn
/etc/services and such into a map - it's simple perl to write.
The missing bit is passwords.  (you're expected to use Kerberos
for that).

So your easiest answers are a NIS->LDAP gateway or bribing a
developer to integrate LDAP map support into the libraries (a
developer who will ignore the totally irrelevant "but PAM
sucks" arguments that will come up).

Barring all that, FreeBSD supports LDAP and works on i386, Alpha
and SPARC64.