Re: History Re: Debunking Emacs merits over GUI - Re: package for Email

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> From: David Masterson <dsmasterson@gmail.com>
> Cc: Gottfried <gottfried@posteo.de>,  "help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org"
>  <help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>
> Date: Fri, 20 Jan 2023 22:04:08 -0800
> 
> 2. Free Software
> 
> While RMS' goal may have been laudable, many (most) programmers could
> not see how to monetize their work in a free software environment and,
> so, went where the money was more plentiful.  Without the investment of
> big bucks that copyrighted software could command, development of Emacs
> in the 90s slowed to a crawl and depended on the programmer "with an
> itch".

The "slowed to a crawl" part doesn't match the facts: the rate of
commits in the 90s doesn't fall below that of 2000s or 2010s.  In
particular, addition of GUI X frames and m18n (a.k.a. "MULE") to Emacs
belong to the 90s: hardly a non-development.  And the development of
the current display engine started in 1998 and ended in 2000, so
technically also a "90s" feature.  Not bad for "capital-deprived"
project!

> 5. Smartphones
> 
> The iPhone is still not capable of supporting Emacs and I don't know how
> well Android could support Emacs.

See the feature/android branch in the Emacs Git repository.

> Even if they could support Emacs, Smartphones are GUI-intensive, so
> not really an environment for a text editor.

Not true, at least not in such an absolute wording.  Smartphones do
provide apps to edit text, and many people would like access to their
Org and TODO lists on the smartphone, let alone read email.

Bottom line: when you are trying to make a point, don't overdo it, and
always check against the actual facts.