[Dobbs]

It actually doesn't use all of the major GNU tools it uses very few of them.

GCC and the build chain is about all I can think of off the top of my head. Most of the userland is from FreeBSD.

And GCC and the build chain are quickly being replaced.

[jshen]

GCC is the most significant piece. So your point is that nearly all modern software is built on top of GNU, but some only use a small portion of the GNU stuff. I think you agree with my original point ;)

[rat87]

Yes but NeXTSTEP could have bought created a fully closed source compiler.