Richard Stallman: Emacs 19

I think that it's very interesting to see how RMS' tune has changed over the years. Initially he was so worried that Lucid would ask people to stop hacking on FSF's version of GNU Emacs (never happened), but said that *he* would never do so. However, for several years now, he's been doing exactly that. Rather than just letting the quality of `competing' (at least in his mind) free software speak for itself, he finds the need to plead to people to stay with him. In fact many of the XEmacs developers continue to contribute to FSF's Emacs. Most XEmacs package developers try to keep their code compatible with both versions. It's quite clear to those of us who've seen the situation unfold that there's really only one stick-in-the-mud who insists on generating the tensions around this issue. And for what it's worth, the silliness about signing legal papers hadn't started yet when the schism occurred. Claiming that this was an attempt to ``gain a short-term advantage'' is just another bit of RMS revisionist history. Before long we'll be hearing about how Richard and Jamie jumped him in an alley while he was walking home after fully implementing all of the new features himself, stole his code, and then presented it as their own :-) Maybe *that's* why years later he has to handle the situation with all of the maturity of my children fighting over a toy. Rick