GCC project was greatly frustrating for many, as the project favored stability over new features. The FSF kept such close control on what was added to the official version of GCC 2.x (developed since 1992) that GCC was used as one example of the "cathedral" development model in Eric S. Raymond's essay The Cathedral and the Bazaar.

In 1997, a group of developers formed the Experimental/Enhanced GNU Compiler System (EGCS) to merge several experimental