Re: Richard Stallman: Emacs 19

Date: Wed, 14 Oct 1998 20:56:30 -0400 From: Richard Stallman <rms(a)gnu.org&gt; . . . This is why I say that the people who started Lucid Emacs did not even try to work with me. At best, it's a half-truth. Various efforts were going on before and during that period of time trying to achieve serious window system support for emacs. When and how and to what extent various parties were communicating is generally open to interpretation. But no matter how things started off, many of us were witness to efforts by the people who started Lucid Emacs to try to work with you. When you make a blanket statement that it didn't happen and later follow up with a clarification that it didn't happen at the time and in the manner that you felt was most appropriate, it seems a bit disingenuous. There were times when I wished that history had taken that course. It's not too late. Sure Lucid's no longer around and Jamie's on to other efforts, but a community has grown up around XEmacs and that community continues to track most of what's happening with FSF's version of Emacs quite closely. In the minds of many, including people that I know who strongly prefer the FSF's version, much greater cooperation and merging of code would be a Good Thing. I think that almost universally, people realize that there's pretty much one person who could make that happen. However, there's a widespread impression that he can be quite difficult to get along with -- like even moreso than you find with hackers in general. It's pretty unlikely that so many people could draw that conclusion from so many situations without there being some truth to it. At some point, for cooperation to really work, that guy would probably have to address that problem seriously and maybe even try to change. Anyway, I personally don't recall seeing statements on xemacs-beta suggesting that people avoid contributing to FSF's version of Emacs. I'm sure that some people somewhere have said it, but I don't think it's a common sentiment. What I have seen are (a) suggestions that decisions around the future of XEmacs need not be constrained by FSF decisions and (b) suggestions that it's not worth expending energy arguing with you. Rick