Re: XEmacs at a crossroads

>>>>> "Stephen" == Stephen J Turnbull <[email protected]> writes:

    Stephen> We all do value XEmacs, its history, the codebase, and you, our
    Stephen> community.  We are sad that XEmacs has fallen so far out of
    Stephen> competition with GNU Emacs, but it's time to admit that is the case,
    Stephen> and think about what we want to do now.  Several alternative paths
    Stephen> have been suggested:

I never thought of it being a competition (at least not for many, many
years).

    Stephen> 1.  Close up shop and release the resources to other projects.

What does that really mean, since XEmacs is open source?

    Stephen> 2.  Close up shop and move en masse to GNU Emacs development.
    Stephen> 3.  Fork current GNU Emacs, and gradually recreate an XEmacs-
    Stephen> flavored GNU-Emacs-compatible language and editor.
    Stephen> 4.  Maintain infrastructure as a "caretaker" project, for the
    Stephen> benefit of continuing users, and in case somebody wants to
    Stephen> pick up the ball.

[snip]

    Stephen> We would like to hear your thoughts.  If you have private patches you
    Stephen> can contribute to XEmacs 21.5, please let us know about them.  They
    Stephen> can be integrated.  XEmacs 21.4 is very near end-of-life, but Vin
    Stephen> Shelton is still maintaining it.

    Stephen> We thank you for your support and contributions over the years!

And thank you and all of the contributors over the many years!

As a user from the original Lucid Emacs days, this is a rather sad
day.  I have never switched to Emacs because there was never a reason
to.  XEmacs always did everything I needed to do (fairly limited).

I blame myself for this state of affairs for not contributing
more. But like all of you, other things get in the way.

I don't have any suggestions on the way forward, but [3] seems like
not such a good idea.

Best wishes to all of you and many thanks for your hard work!

--
Ray