

Rebuttal to Stallman's Story About The Formation of Symbolics and LMI - hhm
http://dlweinreb.wordpress.com/2007/11/11/rebuttal-to-stallmans-story-about-the-formation-of-symbolics-and-lmi/

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jimbokun
"Another lie in this essay is that it was Bernie Greenberg who discovered that
Lisp was a good language in which to write Emacs. In fact, I wrote the first
Emacs in Lisp, for the Lisp machine, a fact of which Stallman is completely
aware. It was afterwards that my close friend Bernie, who was one of the other
Symbolics founders, wrote Multics Emacs."

"And while IaEURXm setting the record straight, the original (TECO-based)
Emacs was created and designed by Guy L. Steele Jr. and David Moon. After they
had it working, and it had become established as the standard text editor at
the AI lab, Stallman took over its maintenance."

Of everything in the article this, if accurate, is the most disappointing to
me. I've always thought about RMS that, regardless of what you think of his
political views on software, the guy who wrote Emacs must be a great hacker.

Although, even if all he accomplished was keeping Emacs free (FSF sense),
that's still something. If Emacs had gone proprietary at some point, it surely
would have disappeared by now.

Am I overreacting here? Is Weinreb downplaying Stallman's part in creating
Emacs? Pretty much all software builds on previous software in one way or
another, and maybe Stallman took the Emacs that Weinreb describes and made it
into something much greater.

Can anyone fill in the blanks for me?

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zetatios
David Moon responded with this comment:

"But in all fairness I have to say that Stallman greatly improved Emacs after
he "liberated" it from Guy and me."

So my faith isn't completely shattered....yet

