There was Cygnus Solutions, which I believe maintained GNU software (debugger, binutils) and contributed large parts of gcc. Cygnus was bought by Red Hat for $674M in 1999.
HN folks may recognize EFF board member John Gilmore as the founder.
And also Michael Tiemann (now at RedHat), and David Henkel-Wallace (now at Technical Illusions, making CastAR).
Their slogan was "We make free software affordable". (In answer to the anti-slogans: "Free software: more expensive than money" and "Linux is only free if your time is worthless".)
I asked David if they named the company "Cygnus" after grepping /usr/dict/words for "gnu". He answered no, because if they'd thought of doing that, they would have named it "Wingnut".
The funniest thing is that David shot that back without missing a beat, with a perfectly straight face, and a somber tone that suggested he deeply regretted the missed opportunity.
Did you know that the word "gnullable" wasn't in /usr/dict/words either?
"Wingnut" (sometimes "wing-nut") is an American political term used as a slur referring to a person who holds extreme, and often irrational, political views usually with a religious overtone. According to Merriam-Webster, it is "a mentally deranged person" or "one who advocates extreme measures or changes : radical."
Cygnus were the go-to company for GCC/GNU related work for hire, like doing compiler toolchain and support for your new embedded platform/new cpu. Even the name was a recursive acronym, like GNU: "Cygnus, Your GNu Support"
I was at Cygnus (and still at RH). The total deal value was actually much higher because it was a stock deal and the Red Hat stock price kept climbing before everything was wrapped up.
HN folks may recognize EFF board member John Gilmore as the founder.