It is a conglomeration of several library parts, all under free software licenses that make them easily usable on embedded products.

It is now maintained by Red Hat developers Jeff Johnston and Corinna Vinschen, and is used in most commercial and non-commercial GCC ports for non-Linux embedded systems.

As of 2004[update], KallistiOS, an independent SDK targeting the Sega Dreamcast, has used Newlib as its standard C library, shipping it with many commercial titles on the platform.

[3] As of 2007[update], devkitARM and devkitPPC, toolchains targeted at homebrew development for commercial game systems, include Newlib as their C library.

As of 2013[update], Google Native Client SDK (NaCl) includes Newlib as the default C library over glibc.