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.
HN folks may recognize EFF board member John Gilmore as the founder.
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".
Did you know that the word "gnullable" wasn't in /usr/dict/words either?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wingnut_%28politics%29
"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."