History of Emacs the Text Editor/Operative System

00:00 The joke that explains everything 01:07 MIT AI Lab, 1976 — where it all began 02:33 The Social Contract — sharing before the GPL 03:03 The proliferation — when Emacs became an idea 03:34 James Gosling and the door that closed 04:13 GNU Emacs — a text editor that changed the world 04:57 Emacs Lisp — when using and writing become the same thing 06:31 The Editor War — Emacs vs Vi 07:52 The Schism — XEmacs and the cost of division 09:20 The dark years — Eclipse, IntelliJ, VSCode 10:16 The renaissance — Doom Emacs, Evil Mode, a new generation 11:02 Org-mode and Magit — why serious developers never left 12:52 What Emacs really is — an argument that never ended Emacs is older than Linux, older than the internet, and older than most of the people who use it. It started as a collection of macros at the MIT AI Lab in 1976, became the first program of the GNU Project, gave birth to the GPL, survived a religious schism, was written off as obsolete, and came back stronger. This is the full history of the text editor that refused to die — and why it still matters in 2025.