On Mon, Apr 10, 2006 at 11:48:55AM -0700, Mark Mitchell wrote: > We have (had) a policy against these kinds of recruiting messages on the > GCC lists... > > Recently, there has your message, and Benjamin Kosnik's message about > internships -- so we need to either reconfirm the earlier policy, or > decide that it's obsolete.
I'm inclined to think that it serves gcc if the list can be used to recruit people to work on gcc for pay. Of course an FSF list cannot sanction offers for proprietary software development, and I wouldn't want to see offers for unrelated software work. But I don't see the merit in banning offers to work on GCC (or related parts of the toolchain like binutils and gdb), assuming that the work is to be contributed back at some point. And if someone is seeking talent to port gcc to a new processor, it would seem that this list is an ideal mechanism to reach the right audience. Since it is an FSF list, I suppose we need to clear a policy change with RMS. But I would argue that it's a good idea, and if we're suddenly overwhelmed with people offering money to GCC developers for GCC work, well, I can think of worse problems to have. :-)