Back then, DJGPP was a much bigger group, and most of the Quake kudos go to Charles Sandmann, author of cwsdpmi, who worked directly with Id to help them optimize their code for our environment.
Thank you for this work. It was my first C compiler in 1998. Y'all helped me on the mailing list and you even replied to my e-mails! I was 11 and this was insane to me.
I too need to thank you for the very first C compiler I ever had access to in 1999, after 10 years of having a book on C in my possession that I couldn't use until then.
The DJGPP project and its contributors were 100% volunteer. I'm sure some of the contributors took advantage of their involvement to obtain consulting gigs on the side (I did ;) but DJGPP itself didn't involve any. The Quake work was a swap; we helped them with optimizing, and they helped us with near pointers. Win-win!
Just passing by to thank you. As many others have mentioned, DJGPP was pivotal for my life. I compiled my first C/Allegro games in DJGPP back in the mid/late 90s.