Re: Another iteration on the Emacs website

[Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>]

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  > "Emacs" preceded the GNU project.  The Gosling Emacs rat-out prompted
  > Richard to write the GPL and sketch out the definition and needs for
  > GNU.  The Emacs code base was rewritten to be free of third-party
  > copyrights and then restarted as GNU Emacs.

I developed the original Emacs in 1976.  I started working in GNU in
January 1984.  I started working on GNU Emacs in September 1984,

Originally I thought I would use Gosmacs with some changes; a friend
said Gosling had given him the right to distribute his version of that
and he could let me redistribute it with changes.

It turned out that Gosmacs needed big
changes to replace its Mocklisp with real Lisp.

The original Emacs had terms that do not qualify as free.
They required people to send their changes to me.
By the time of GNU Emacs I had concluded that such a condition
was wrong, so I developed the idea of copyleft in early 1985.


-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html.