4 ms·

rms was (is?) probably still traumatized from the emacs/xemacs split, which is still there and, as far as I can see, does impede emacs development.

• riffraff 12y ago
  as an outsider, how does the (x)emacs split impede development? It seems emacs has been steadily, if somewhat slowly, improving (new releases etc).
  • gpvos 12y ago
    Well, it was a bit of a hunch, based on the slowness of development. Other commenters have maybe given better explanations.
• e40 12y ago
  xemacs looks dead to me. 2009 was the last official release. See http://www.xemacs.org/Releases/index.html#Stable http://www.xemacs.org/Releases/index.html#Stable
• hga 12y ago
  The former might be true, but it's very unlikely the latter, hard and harsh experience has shown that in the long term few things can impede development more than having RMS as a gatekeeper. He's a difficult person, or so I observed when we were in the same social circle, later when I was working for LMI while he was replicating the most essential new Zetalisp functionality, when we both had given up on that and were roommates when he launched the GNU project, and afterwords when for a while I worked for a "Software Hoarder", specifically the company that actually had a license for (James) Goslings Emacs, which GNU Emacs is an illicit fork of. (He even accused that company of setting fire to his apartment building; in truth it was pretty generic arson by "a couple of kids", not surprising because it was in a not so nice part of Cambridge.)