From: jqb AT netcom DOT com (Jim Balter) Subject: Re: Starting all over from 16.1 ? 18 Feb 1997 15:26:52 -0800 Approved: cygnus DOT gnu-win32 AT cygnus DOT com Distribution: cygnus Message-ID: <3309A428.711D.cygnus.gnu-win32@netcom.com> References: <199702171929 DOT LAA00222 AT andare DOT fugue DOT com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.01Gold (WinNT; I) Original-To: Ted Lemon Original-CC: gnu-win32 AT cygnus DOT com Original-Sender: owner-gnu-win32 AT cygnus DOT com Ted Lemon wrote: > > The Emacs conflict was that James Gosling wrote a version of Emacs for > Unix and VMS, which was originally under a copyright that encouraged > people to contribute changes and features. The FSF based versions of > GNU Emacs prior to 17 on this ``free'' version of Gosmacs, and made > their own distribution, which was a lot closer to the old emacs from > ITS Teco and Lisp Machine days. Gosling later sold the copyright for > his emacs to Unipress, who contacted the FSF and told them to cease > and desist in using Gosmacs-based code. So the FSF rewrote their > emacs from scratch, with a real lisp interpreter instead of the crappy > Gosmacs MockLisp interpreter. That was GNU Emacs version 17. This "history" is a fantasy. Stallman rewrote emacs from scratch in 1985, before the advent of the FSF. For a bit of non-fantasized history, here's a quote from OOOONEWS, which is still part of the distribution, and contains changelogs from version 1.1 to 1.15, which was by that time called "Emacs 15" (dropping the 1. level of the three level numbering happened at Emacs 13), and was followed by 16, 17, 18, and currently 19. None of the entries in OOOONEWS says "rewrote it from scratch". Changes in Emacs 15 [...] * It is now possible convert Mocklisp code (for Gosling Emacs) to Lisp code that can run in GNU Emacs. M-x convert-mocklisp-buffer converts the contents of the current buffer from Mocklisp to GNU Emacs Lisp. You should then save the converted buffer with C-x C-w under a name ending in ".el" There are probably some Mocklisp constructs that are not handled. If you encounter one, feel free to report the failure as a bug. The construct will be handled in a future Emacs release, if that is not not too hard to do. Note that lisp code converted from Mocklisp code will not necessarily run as fast as code specifically written for GNU Emacs, nor will it use the many features of GNU Emacs which are not present in Gosling's emacs. (In particular, the byte-compiler (m-x byte-compile-file) knows little about compilation of code directly converted from mocklisp.) It is envisaged that old mocklisp code will be incrementally converted to GNU lisp code, with M-x convert-mocklisp-buffer being the first step in this process. GNU emacs implemented elisp from the beginning; it never implemented Mocklisp; the above was the extent of its support. It was GNU emacs from the beginning; it was never Gosling emacs. The logs also note "A document of the differences between GNU Emacs and Twenex Emacs now exists"; that was 1.3. Stallman invented the original twenex emacs in TECO (a programmable line editor) back at MIT, and reinvented it in C as GNU emacs after he left. In between, Gosling wrote his C version. > Anyway, this is all, of course, way the heck off topic. But since > people keep posting off-topic flames (sorry, Jim, I mean intellectual > disagreements) about the GPL on this mailing list, I thought I'd > contribute a little historical note to add interest... It's too bad that you still confuse critical analysis and discussion with flaming and fail to note that the title of this mailing list is "gnu-win32", that the word "GNU" in there is important, that quite a few people on this list care about these issues, and that employees of the maintainer of the list have been active participants in the discussion, your personal opinion of what is or is not on topic notwithstanding. But if you truly think that these things are off topic, then it is certainly hypocritical to use them as justification for posting something that you believe to be off topic, especially when your "contribution" is fantasized or misremembered history. -- - For help on using this list, send a message to "gnu-win32-request AT cygnus DOT com" with one line of text: "help".