[hga]

The "dismissal", as you call it, is hardly unfair (note, I was an eyewitness to all this, the players were largely in my social circle and I worked for Lisp Machines Inc during that period, heck, we both gave up on Lisp Machines in general at the same time). As DLW relates, RMS didn't do the designs of the new features, he copied some of them. In part I believe this is because he's much more an improver than an innovator when it comes to code and systems. This can have massive qualitative results, like after he took over ITS EMACS, but it deprives him of the cachet of "inventor", for what that's worth.