Historically, Cygnus Solutions was very successful at this with custom development on the GNU toolchain. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cygnus_Solutions https:/

Historically, Cygnus Solutions was very successful at this with custom development on the GNU toolchain. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cygnus_Solutions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cygnus_Solutions I don't know if there's something specific about compilers that makes this model work especially well. They would get paid to add specific features to the toolchain that customers wanted, and also to help the customers fix bugs or understand how to do what they wanted.