At work in the 90s I was allowed to buy a brand new sparc workstation with a shrinkwrap compiler (and shrinkwrap sybase). One of the first things I did was compile gcc so I could install the whole gnu world.
They did the same at my first job out of college (Sun based company). It was my first introduction to free software. That was circa 1990... it's amazing that gcc is still going strong.
Exactly! I begged someone random for a gcc tarball.
Now I am imagining you panhandling on the sidewalk, stopping random strangers and shaking slightly: “hey man, can you spare a gcc tarball?”