GCC Development Mission Statement (2021-06-01)

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.
• Compilers are available under the terms of the GPL.
• Other components (runtime libraries, testsuites, etc) are available under various free licenses.
• Copyrights are held by individual authors or the FSF.
• Patches must be legally acceptable for redistribution under the applicable license.

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. [version control], 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.