Hardly anyone cared about GCC in those days, most compilers were still commercial.
In fact, GCC only started to matter to UNIX folks, because Sun introduced the concept of user and developer UNIX workloads, and all UNIX vendors followed along, making the UNIX development tools into an additional package one had to buy.
It was popular with people who came from a Unix background and wanted to port Unix software to DOS/Windows (or even OS/2). While the API differences were still a challenge, GCC did better at code ported from Unix than Borland/Microsoft/etc did - especially since a lot of that software was already being compiled under GCC on Unix anyway
True that Borland/Microsoft was more popular among professional DOS/Windows developers, especially those for whom that was their native platform
> those that could not buy them, would get copies from a street bazar
Teenage me didn’t know of any “street bazaars” selling Microsoft/Borland developer tool warez. But I walked into the local computer shop and saw some modestly priced CD-ROMs, with GCC (among other things), and convinced my Dad to buy them for me.
In fact, GCC only started to matter to UNIX folks, because Sun introduced the concept of user and developer UNIX workloads, and all UNIX vendors followed along, making the UNIX development tools into an additional package one had to buy.
Thus the race to improve GCC started.