> they are trying to establish a tone of authority by establishing that they championed… using someone else’s free or open source software rather than paying for something?

At that time, there was a lot of mistrust of FOSS (and the GPL in particular) in commercial organisations. That extended to even _using_ FOSS, and particularly something like a compiler, whose output "might be contaminated" by the FOSS licence.

That changed, slowly, in part because there were dedicated advocates who addressed people's concerns, showed them the actual licence text, etc, etc. It was a valuable contribution to the success of the concept of FOSS beyond just developers.

From today's perspective, I understand your concern, but perhaps this might help explain the OP's claim.