XEmacs and its multiuser roots (was Re: change \C-m binding to newline-and-indent)

Holger Schauer <schauer(a)coling.uni-freiburg.de&gt; writes in xemacs-beta(a)xemacs.org: sb> ... I am not opposed to making it a default if it is installed sb> (ie. by having it autoload initialization). Is this such a problem? The XEmacs user base has changed dramatically over the last three years in favor of systems that are typically single-user. If XEmacs/(95|98|00|NT) ever catches on, it will only further this trend. I'm not expressing an opinion one way or another, I'm just asking. That's a good point. Consider the suggestion dropped[1]. I've never used XEmacs (or GNU Emacs) in a multiuser environment by the way -- twelve years and counting ... ... Agreed, but the package fetching UI is very new. There are no doubt plenty of refinements to make. There is also nothing in the model that forces system administrators to allow users to install lisp into the common system directories. There's good reason to disallow it even in single-user systems -- I'm pretty much the only user of my development machine, but the `steve' account doesn't have write access to anything system-wide. Users have always been encouraged to install their own lisp. What hasn't been possible has been for users to install their own lisp and bind them as tightly to Emacs as the things the Emacs maintainers have thrown at them. I see nothing wrong with allowing that. Anyway, granting that "XEmacs is forgotting its multi-user roots" whether or not this is in fact the case, my question is "What difference does it make?" This is not a flame. Footnotes: [1] I plead temporary insanity and a bad case of jet lag.