When
Symbolics stopped sending over its source-code changes,
Stallman responded by holing up in his MIT offices and
rewriting each new software feature and tool from
scratch. Frustrating as it may have been, it guaranteed
that future Lisp Machine users had unfettered access to
the same features as Symbolics users.
It also guaranteed Stallman's legendary status within
the hacker community. Already renowned for his work
with Emacs, Stallman's ability to match the output of
an entire team of Symbolics programmers-a team that
included more than a few legendary hackers itself-still
stands has one of the major human accomplishments of
the Information Age, or of any age for that matter.
Dubbing it a "master hack" and Stallman himself a
"virtual John Henry of computer code," author Steven
Levy notes that many of his Symbolics-employed rivals
had no choice but to pay their idealistic former
comrade grudging respect. Levy quotes Bill Gosper, a
hacker who eventually went to work for Symbolics in the
company's Palo Alto office, expressing amazement over
Stallman's output during this period: I can see
something Stallman wrote, and I might decide it was bad
(probably not, but somebody could convince me it was
bad), and I would still say, "But wait a
minute-Stallman doesn't have anybody to argue with all
night over there.
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