sommers@topaz.ARPA (Liz Sommers) (04/04/85)
> >First, based on my experience with both CCA Emacs and Gosling's Emacs, >there doesn't exist superior, well supported commercial Emacs that the >GNU Emacs would be likely to displace. On the contrary, in the DEC >world there are thousands of very happy users of RMS's free Emacs who >would be surprised to hear that in the Unix world you have to pay for >the similar, but in many sense inferior, product. Just a note: Unipress has come out with a completely new version of Gosling Emacs. Check it out before you put it down. Gosling Emacs can no longer be considered an inferior product. I have been using it in both alpha and beta test and now prefer it to RMS ITS Emacs which I also use everyday. > >Second, I don't think that Brad's opinion of RMS as a fanatic communist >is appropriate. Contrary to the common American belief, every non >capitalist is not necessarily a communist. I don't personally know RMS, >but rather than being a fanatic communist, he seems to be much closer to >an idealistic software anarchist in the most positive meaning of the >word. > > Juha Heinanen > {ut-sally, akgua}!usl!jih RMS is a pretty close friend. He is not a communist. He is a self-proclaimed anarchist. Some of his ideas are pretty buggy, but his software rarely is. The people who are doing everyday support are also good. Gosling EMACS and GNUmacs have different niches. RMS is not interested in doing a lot of support work, he is interested in developing software and having the users support it. Unipress has a staff dedicated to supporting Gosling Emacs. (Yes, I know they didn't use to, but things DO change). If you want to take the time to do ALL your emacs support yourself, then GNUMACS might just be the thing for you. You just have to realize that bug reports will probably be answered with "Well, what is the fix?" A number of sites outside of universities do not have the time or personel to cope with this method of support. As a second point, soon you will be able to run Gosling Emacs on ALL your machines, using the same mlisp files. Emacs for VMS, 4.2, 4.1 and System V are already pretty stable. MsDos and PcDos EMACS are going out in a real beta test sometime this week. I have no problem switching from one to another. GNUmacs is still only available for 4.2 on 68000 boxes (and maybe Vaxen), a friend of mine is still trying to port it to the Pyramid, but has not had time to really work around its machine dependencies. I work on a lot of machines that are not 68000's or Vaxen. I like the portability of Gosling Emacs. I work on maybe 5 or 6 different machines a day, I dont want to have to write different inits for each machine or remember "what is the command on THIS machine?". I have been Alpha testing the new Gosling Emacs for the AT, using it very extensively for both text and programming. The old bugs that made it unusable are mostly out. Will report on it in another message. I cannot make the usual disclaimer that I have nothing to do with Unipress except as a satisfied customer. While I do not work for Unipress, I am connected with them in various ways. -- liz sommers uucp: ...{harvard, seismo, ut-sally, sri-iu, ihnp4!packard}!topaz!sommers arpa: sommers@rutgers