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Emacs Needs To Move To GitHub, Says ESR

Posted by timothy on from the this-way-to-the-bazaar dept.

hypnosec writes "Eric S. Raymond, co-founder of the Open Source Initiative, has recommended that Emacs should move to another version control system like GitHub, as bzr is dying. In an email, Raymond highlighted the key reasons why he believes that Emacs should move. Raymond said that bzr is moribund; its dev list has flatlined; and most of Canonical's in-house projects have already abandoned bzr and moved to GitHub. ESR believes that bzr's codebase is sufficiently mature to be used as a production tool, but he does mention that continuing to use the revision control system will have 'social and signaling effects damaging to Emacs's prospects.'" Update: 01/06 20:50 GMT by U L : ESR did not suggest Github the proprietary hosting platform for git, but rather git the version control system. Which is actually already available on Savannah (the bazaar repository is automatically synced with the git repository).

5 of 252 comments (clear)

  1. What's bzr? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Never heard of it.

  2. Re:GNU Savannah supports git by mwvdlee · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Just wondering; why doesn't your article mention Github, which is probably the most popular service right now?

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  3. The usual ESR self-aggrandizement by mvdwege · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Apparently Eric has decided he has been out of the public eye too long, as he posts yet another self-aggrandizing screed on a mailing list.

    Seriously, after the kernel configuration debacle and his hysterical rants on the Fedora list, does anyone take this man seriously anymore? Look at how he represents himself: an expert on source control systems, whose highest achievement is moving troff to a git repo. It's kconfig all over again.

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  4. The real question is about Emacs by hcs_$reboot · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Actually, is the dying one being Emacs, instead? That would be sad - but I wonder how younger generations do appreciate Emacs which is quite tricky to get used to - while so convenient and still unequaled in 2014 when it comes to some features (hyper customization thanks to (e)Lisp, M-x features with completion, intra-shell/processes, apropos, ^x-( ), languages modes ...). It seems the major IDE or text editors did not even try to reproduce the main features of Emacs - do they ignore the Emacs logic because they have no knowledge of it, or do they simply feel those features are obsolete? For once, nobody reinvents the wheel, which is going to die eventually. Sad, really.

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  5. The Emacs userbase is still growing by ciaran_o_riordan · · Score: 4, Interesting

    > I wonder how younger generations do appreciate Emacs

    Someone said that to me in 2002. I was a new Emacs user then, and I'm still using it now.

    Debian's package install stats suggest the Emacs user base is steadily growing:

    http://qa.debian.org/popcon-graph.php?packages=emacsen-common

    And the developer mailing list is very active and high-quality:

    https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/

    However, Hip-Hop's future is looking less certain:

    http://www.theonion.com/video/there-are-people-in-world-who-are-concerned-about,32163/

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