>Bill was probably referring to what RMS calls "Evil Software Hoarder Emacs" aka "UniPress Emacs", which was the commercially supported version of James Gosling's Unix Emacs (aka Gosling Emacs / Gosmacs / UniPress Emacs / Unimacs) sold by UniPress Software, and it actually cost a thousand or so for a source license (but I don't remember how much a binary license was). Sun had the source installed on their file servers while Gosling was working there, which was probably how Bill Joy had access to it, although it was likely just a free courtesy license, so Gosling didn't have to pay to license his own code back from UniPress to use at Sun.
>I worked at UniPress on the Emacs display driver for the NeWS window system (the PostScript based window system that James Gosling also wrote), with Mike "Emacs Hacker Boss" Gallaher, who was charge of Emacs development at UniPress. One day during the 80's Mike and I were wandering around an East coast science fiction convention, and ran into RMS, who's a regular fixture at such events.
>Mike said: "Hello, Richard. I heard a rumor that your house burned down. That's terrible! Is it true?"
>RMS replied right back: "Yes, it did. But where you work, you probably heard about it in advance."
>Everybody laughed. It was a joke! Nobody's feelings were hurt. He's a funny guy, quick on his feet!
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26113192
>Bill was probably referring to what RMS calls "Evil Software Hoarder Emacs" aka "UniPress Emacs", which was the commercially supported version of James Gosling's Unix Emacs (aka Gosling Emacs / Gosmacs / UniPress Emacs / Unimacs) sold by UniPress Software, and it actually cost a thousand or so for a source license (but I don't remember how much a binary license was). Sun had the source installed on their file servers while Gosling was working there, which was probably how Bill Joy had access to it, although it was likely just a free courtesy license, so Gosling didn't have to pay to license his own code back from UniPress to use at Sun.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gosling_Emacs
>I worked at UniPress on the Emacs display driver for the NeWS window system (the PostScript based window system that James Gosling also wrote), with Mike "Emacs Hacker Boss" Gallaher, who was charge of Emacs development at UniPress. One day during the 80's Mike and I were wandering around an East coast science fiction convention, and ran into RMS, who's a regular fixture at such events.
>Mike said: "Hello, Richard. I heard a rumor that your house burned down. That's terrible! Is it true?"
>RMS replied right back: "Yes, it did. But where you work, you probably heard about it in advance."
>Everybody laughed. It was a joke! Nobody's feelings were hurt. He's a funny guy, quick on his feet!
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