As others have pointed out, Gow isn't really a Cygwin replacement; it offers over a hundred *nix apps compiled as native win32 binaries. A similar project from yesteryear - might be of some small use to one or two people (max):

The Berkeley Utilities - 40 unix commands ported to DOS http://web.archive.org/web/20090304003628/http://openetwork.... "The Berkeley Utilities follow rigorously the unix System V syntax and include all the options found on any unix system plus a few carefully chosen ones. They used to sell for $200 and are now free." Great documentation, but sadly no source.