Re: XEmacs at a crossroads

Stephen> We all do value XEmacs, its history, the codebase, and you, our Stephen> community. We are sad that XEmacs has fallen so far out of Stephen> competition with GNU Emacs, but it's time to admit that is the case, Stephen> and think about what we want to do now. Several alternative paths Stephen> have been suggested: I never thought of it being a competition (at least not for many, many years). Stephen> 1. Close up shop and release the resources to other projects. What does that really mean, since XEmacs is open source? Stephen> 2. Close up shop and move en masse to GNU Emacs development. Stephen> 3. Fork current GNU Emacs, and gradually recreate an XEmacs- Stephen> flavored GNU-Emacs-compatible language and editor. Stephen> 4. Maintain infrastructure as a "caretaker" project, for the Stephen> benefit of continuing users, and in case somebody wants to Stephen> pick up the ball. [snip] Stephen> We would like to hear your thoughts. If you have private patches you Stephen> can contribute to XEmacs 21.5, please let us know about them. They Stephen> can be integrated. XEmacs 21.4 is very near end-of-life, but Vin Stephen> Shelton is still maintaining it. Stephen> We thank you for your support and contributions over the years! And thank you and all of the contributors over the many years! As a user from the original Lucid Emacs days, this is a rather sad day. I have never switched to Emacs because there was never a reason to. XEmacs always did everything I needed to do (fairly limited). I blame myself for this state of affairs for not contributing more. But like all of you, other things get in the way. I don't have any suggestions on the way forward, but [3] seems like not such a good idea. Best wishes to all of you and many thanks for your hard work! -- Ray _______________________________________________ XEmacs-Beta mailing list XEmacs-Beta(a)xemacs.org http://lists.xemacs.org/mailman/listinfo/xemacs-beta