GCC Development Mission Statement (1999-04-22)
GCC development is a part of the GNU
Project, aiming to improve the compiler used in the GNU system
including the GNU/Linux variant.
The GCC development effort uses an open development environment and
supports many other platforms in order to foster a world-class
optimizing compiler, to attract a larger team of developers, to ensure
that GCC and the GNU system work on multiple architectures and diverse
environments, and to more thoroughly test and extend the features of
GCC.
Free Software Project
- Supporting the goals of the GNU project, as defined by the FSF.
- Compilers are available under the terms of the GPL.
- Copyrights for the compilers are to be held by the FSF.
- Other components (runtime libraries, testsuites, etc) will be
available under various free licenses with copyrights being held
by individual authors or the FSF.
- All legal relationships with contributors and users are the
responsibility of the FSF.
- Patches must be legally acceptable for inclusion into the GNU
project.
Design and Development Goals
- New languages
- New optimizations
- New targets
- Improved runtime libraries
- Faster debug cycle
- Various other infrastructure improvements
Open Development Environment
- Encourage cooperation and communication between developers.
- Work more closely with "consumers".
- Code available to everyone at any time, and everyone is
welcome to participate in development.
- Patches will be considered equally based on their
technical merits.
- All individuals and companies are welcome to contribute
as long as they accept the groundrules.
- Open mailing lists.
- Developer friendly tools and procedures (i.e., cvs, multiple
maintainers, etc).
- Conflicts of interest exist for many GCC developers; the
developers as well as the GCC Steering
Committee will not allow those conflicts of interest to have an
effect on the development of GCC.