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

[David Masterson <dsmasterson@gmail.com>]

Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support> writes:

> * David Masterson <dsmasterson@gmail.com> [2023-01-21 09:10]:
>> 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".  Good stuff was done, but it could've been so much more.  This is
>> why Emacs development took 40 years whereas things might've happened
>> faster in the more capitalistic world (but Emacs would've been very
>> different beast!).
>
> I agree to your points. Though if you say that Emacs could have been
> more suitable to general public if it would be proprietary, maybe yes,
> but it would not be extensible.

Not necessarily.  The ELisp engine in Emacs would've continued being
developed in a proprietary way, but Elisp packages could continue to be
developed by anybody.  The company might even see value in hosting
package libraries.

The value-add might be faster development of things like multi-threading
Emacs exposed to Elisp, portability to more platforms (smartphones),
better support (theoretically!), and so on.

The downside is a repeat of TECO Emacs on DEC mainframes when DEC died
in the early 80s.

>> 5. Smartphones
>> 
>> The iPhone is still not capable of supporting Emacs and I don't know how
>> well Android could support Emacs.  Even if they could support Emacs,
>> Smartphones are GUI-intensive, so not really an environment for a text
>> editor. So the next generation of users/programmers are going to be
>> "non-GUI challenged".
>
> Right.
>
> Emacs runs without problem in Termux for Replicant/Android and similar
> systems. There is nice tap-keyboard, with CTRL, ALT, etc. which is
> locked, user can basically use single finger to get all Emacs
> commands. 
>
> There is effort on Emacs Development mailing list to make Emacs for
> Android with GUI.

Really?!?  Sounds interesting.  I've used iPhones, but I might have to
look into an Android.

-- 
David Masterson