The only truth to the story is the missed email.

There is nothing "unmodular" about GCC -- considering that it supports plenty of architectures, operating systems, and languages.

The big difference, which people seem to miss in the context of the GNU project and GNU system, is that modularity is for free software projects. GCC is planty modular, and very easy to extend in any way shape or form .. if you abide by the license!

If you want to be a parasite on a project licensed under the GNU GPL, you will have a rough ride .. that is after all the whole idea of copyleft.