GNU, Linux, the free BSDs, etc. have done a lot, but in the end they have only copied the work that came before them. You can see it from the surface down-- the

GNU, Linux, the free BSDs, etc. have done a lot, but in the end they have only copied the work that came before them. You can see it from the surface down-- the GUIs are copies of Windows or Mac, and the OS kernel is a copy of AT&T Bell Labs Unix with ideas from other newer OSes. Really, the first thing you point out is the widget toolkits? Those really aren't the work of any of the projects you listed (with the exception of GNU and GTK+, though it's presently GNOME, which is still a subproject of GNU, but largely dominated by Red Hat). There are tons of different toolkits available, which is truly the beauty of it. The bazaar choice. I'm not sure what you're expecting. It's not like the GUI model has changed much since its inception. The fact of the matter is that a lot of proprietary operating systems owe significant debt to "basement hackers," particularly to BSDs due to their permissive licensing model. The TCP/IP stack on OS X, for one thing. As for kernels, I can't help but be reminded of the Torvalds-Tanenbaum debate. Also, the Hurd is not monolithic modular like the BSD and Linux kernels, it's a multiserver microkernel approach.