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

[Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support>]

* 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.

As proprietary decisions would lead to control of people, and
extensibility features are not part of it. 

And proprietary Emacs would not include too many features, as they
would be wasting resources, and not bringing money, as you said.

> 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.


-- 
Jean

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