This is a response I made to a Reddit post that I’ve expanded and embellished. I’m sharing it here for future reference.
The poster appeared to be questioning the investment of the considerable time required to master Emacs, and was concerned that Emacs would not persist with the particular features that mattered to them. I have experienced bitter disappointment as a user of software whose time was cut short. Software that was taken in a direction that just didn’t work for me and was stripped of many useful features*. So, I understand how this question can be a concern, especially to someone who has been burned.
But, from my perspective, Emacs is as immune to this problem as any piece of software can ever be. Its development is hosted and controlled by the GNU project[1], an organization founded on and dedicated to free software. It has gone through a copyright crisis[2] and any code of questionable provenance has been replaced with clean code. All subsequent contributions are dedicated[4] to the Free Software Foundation[5]. Its code is secured for the ages, with countless copies of the code in the hands of fans, engineers and zealots. Any hostile force that assumes control of Emacs development will be answered with a fork to preserve the desired functionality. Among Emacs’ users are the most stubborn and quixotic software developers in the world with neurodivergent thinking that will brook no compromise. Spending time with Emacs users it seems that there is no feature too small to fail having its own community of rabid adherent’s. While I don’t have the skill to fork Emacs if it goes astray or gets hijacked, some of the users do, and they have will to follow through.
At fifty years old and counting[6], if Emacs can’t survive intact there is no hope in the world. As they say, hope springs eternal, and In my dreams our grandchildren will be using Emacs.
- Microsoft OneNote for Mac, circa 2018
Find “Gosling Emacs” at gemini://gemi.dev/cgi-bin/wp.cgi/view?Gosling+Emacs
GNU Emacs Copyright Assignment
Original Reddit post that instigated this post
I see often that one should use the gui instead of using emacs in terminal. My use case relies on using it in the terminal - and everything seems to work very well. Anyone knows if using emacs via terminal will be abandoned at any point or will the terminal front end always be supported?
Reddit: r/emacs: emacs terminal
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