SXEmacs is a fork of the XEmacs text editor. It runs on many Unix-like operating systems, and is notable for features such as FFI support, enhanced number types (similar to bignums in XEmacs 21.5), raw string regexps, and an implementation of Pugh's skip lists. Any user can download SXEmacs as free software available under Version 3 of the GNU General Public License.

History

On December 31, 2004, Steve Youngs (lead developer) announced the creation of SXEmacs on the emacs-devel and xemacs-beta mailing lists.

The software community generally refers to FSF GNU Emacs, XEmacs, SXEmacs (and a number of other similar editors) collectively or individually as emacsen or as emacs, since they all take their inspiration from the original TECO Emacs.

The reasons he cited for the fork were:

• A belief that XEmacs was too "broken" and unstable
• Wanting to make radical changes
• Wanting a development environment not embroiled in politics
• Wanting more control over the project
• Making it easier for Developers to contribute and get involved

SXEmacs and GPLv3

On November 25, 2007, patch-34 of the main 22.1.8 development branch was committed. This marked the start of a transition to GPLv3. This transition was completed the following day (November 26, 2007) with patch-37.

References