Within the Unix community, the two native editor
programs were vi, written by Sun Microsystems cofounder
Bill Joy, and ed, written by Bell Labs scientist (and
Unix cocreator) Ken Thompson. Both were useful and
popular, but neither offered the endlessly expandable
nature of Emacs. In rewriting Emacs for the Unix
audience, Stallman stood a better chance of showing off
his skills. It also stood to reason that Emacs users
might be more attuned to the Stallman mentality.
Looking back, Stallman says he didn't view the decision
in strategic terms. "I wanted an Emacs, and I had a
good opportunity to develop one."
Once again, the notion of reinventing the wheel grated
on Stallman's efficient hacker sensibilities. In
writing a Unix version of Emacs, Stallman was soon
following the footsteps of Carnegie Mellon graduate
student James Gosling, author of a C-based version
dubbed Gosling Emacs or GOSMACS. Gosling's version of
Emacs included an interpreter that exploited a
simplified offshoot of the Lisp language called
MOCKLISP.
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