Gosling Emacs

Gosling Emacs / Unipress Emacs
Original author(s)James Gosling
Developer(s)UniPress
Initial release1981; 43 years ago (1981)
Written inC
Operating systemUnix, VMS
TypeText editor

Gosling Emacs (often shortened to "Gosmacs" or "gmacs") is a discontinued Emacs implementation written in 1981 by James Gosling in C.[1]

Gosling initially allowed Gosling Emacs to be redistributed with no formal restrictions, as required by the "Emacs commune" since the 1970s,[2] only asking for a letter acknowledging his authorship.[3] Later, wishing to move on and after a failed search for people who would maintain it under the same rights, he finally sold his version of Emacs to UniPress because they agreed to sell it under reasonable terms. The dispute between Richard Stallman and UniPress inspired the creation of the first formal license for Emacs, which later became the GPL, as Congress had introduced copyright for software in 1980.[4]

  1. ^ Stallman, Richard (28 October 2002), My Lisp Experiences and the Development of GNU Emacs
  2. ^ Sam Williams (2002). "6. The Emacs Commune". Free as in freedom. "O'Reilly Media, Inc.". ISBN 0-596-00287-4.
  3. ^ Hansen Hsu and Marc Weber (10 October 2019). "Oral History of James Gosling, part 1 of 2". youtube. Computer History Museum. Retrieved 5 June 2023.
  4. ^ Sam Williams (2002). "9. The GNU General Public License". Free as in freedom. "O'Reilly Media, Inc.". ISBN 0-596-00287-4.