3 ms·

> Richard Gabriel and Guy Steele (MIT AI Lab) wrote the original Emacs AFAIK the first version of Emacs was written by Richard Stallman and Guy L. Steele, both

by EdiX 10y ago

> Richard Gabriel and Guy Steele (MIT AI Lab) wrote the original Emacs AFAIK the first version of Emacs was written by Richard Stallman and Guy L. Steele, both wikipedia and jwz give partial credit to Stallman. [0] https://www.jwz.org/doc/lemacs.html https://www.jwz.org/doc/lemacs.html

hga 10y ago
Wikipedia??? Please, and I don't believe jwz was an eyewitness, plus that link no longer works EDIT: I forget what he did with redirects from this site, but all he says that I could quickly find is: Dramatis Personae: Richard Stallman: creator of Emacs, founder of the FSF. It's not a serious statement of provenance, and especially in the context he'd want to be generous towards RMS there before he describes the sort of behavior those of us who knew RMS well was well known for by the '70s.... Eyewitnesses like Ed Schwalenberg (private communication) and the late Daniel Weinberg (search for his revived blog, which also has testimony from David Moon who did a bit of the initial work, and as I recall others) say that RMS arrived a bit late in the game, but deserves great credit for turning their beginning into such a major thing even/especially in the TECO era. And that's basically RMS's MO, he takes good beginnings and (generally) makes them into rather nice things, GCC might be the only well known exception where he started from scratch, but then again compilers were a pretty well established thing back then. For original ideas and such, look to things like the GPL, and as I recall he is said to have done some important AI research before he got lured away to systems and tools.
- hga 10y ago
  And for the Wikipedia cite, I'll reply with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gosling_Emacs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gosling_Emacs which I used to find the RMS Slashdot AMA quote that confirms the fork.
- cwzwarich 10y ago
  GCC wasn't started from scratch either. It was heavily based on the PO project by Jack Davidson and Chris Fraser.
  - hga 10y ago
    But did he take code, or only the ideas from that project?

by EdiX 10y ago

hga 10y ago

Wikipedia??? Please, and I don't believe jwz was an eyewitness, plus that link no longer works EDIT: I forget what he did with redirects from this site, but all he says that I could quickly find is: Dramatis Personae: Richard Stallman: creator of Emacs, founder of the FSF. It's not a serious statement of provenance, and especially in the context he'd want to be generous towards RMS there before he describes the sort of behavior those of us who knew RMS well was well known for by the '70s.... Eyewitnesses like Ed Schwalenberg (private communication) and the late Daniel Weinberg (search for his revived blog, which also has testimony from David Moon who did a bit of the initial work, and as I recall others) say that RMS arrived a bit late in the game, but deserves great credit for turning their beginning into such a major thing even/especially in the TECO era. And that's basically RMS's MO, he takes good beginnings and (generally) makes them into rather nice things, GCC might be the only well known exception where he started from scratch, but then again compilers were a pretty well established thing back then. For original ideas and such, look to things like the GPL, and as I recall he is said to have done some important AI research before he got lured away to systems and tools.

hga 10y ago
And for the Wikipedia cite, I'll reply with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gosling_Emacs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gosling_Emacs which I used to find the RMS Slashdot AMA quote that confirms the fork.
cwzwarich 10y ago
GCC wasn't started from scratch either. It was heavily based on the PO project by Jack Davidson and Chris Fraser.
- hga 10y ago
  But did he take code, or only the ideas from that project?