Read it carefully: When he talks about Emacs, he says Emacs. Then he says: “produce the best possible GNU Emacs”. You might have just skipped over the GNU here,

Read it carefully: When he talks about Emacs, he says Emacs. Then he says: “produce the best possible GNU Emacs”. You might have just skipped over the GNU here, because that is also the name of the software, but it matters in this case. If your realize that, his message is extremely clear. (And this also how I read his message the first time, before I read your post)