I installed gnustep-gui (emerge -v gnustep-env) with -gsnd. "/etc/init.d/gnustep start" still tries to start gnustep_sndd (which I guess doesn't exist). Then "/etc/init.d/gnustep stop" doesn't work because it tries to kill gnustep_sndd which isn't running. Then I can't start gnustep again because it says its already running, but I also can't stop it. So I have to remove /var/lib/init.d/started/gnustep to restart gnustep. I re-emerged gnustep-gui with gsnd in package.use then everything works fine.
gsnd will compile with that use flag, but the binary is at best "sketchy" -- support in /etc/init.d/gnustep has been removed in recent gnustep-env ebuilds (can uncomment to test, if you want, though). (Also, daemon will start if it needs to, besides).