[azernik]

Your equation of "not ever" and "never" is off - "ever" means "always", and "never" means "always not" ("ever not"). In logic terms:

"Ever so" = for all, so

"Never so" = for all, not so

"Not ever so" = not (for all, so) = there exists, where not so.

The last is fairly clearly the intent of GP. Startup is short either way now, but there exists a time when it was not short - insert references to old slow hardware that would take 10-20 seconds to boot emacs.