Z:gnu-www-ja-rms-nyu-2001-transcript--f9f342-So all we had to do to start w/en

So all we had to do to start work was find a name for the system. Now, we hackers always look for a funny or naughty name for a program, because thinking of people being amused by the name is half the fun of writing the program. [Laughter] And we had a tradition of recursive acronyms, to say that the program that you're writing is similar to some existing program. You can give it a recursive acronym name which says: this one's not the other. So, for instance, there were many Tico text editors in the '60's and '70's, and they were generally called something-or-other Tico. Then one clever hacker called his Tint, for Tint Is Not Tico &mdash; the first recursive acronym. In 1975, I developed the first Emacs text editor, and there were many imitations of Emacs, and a lot of them were called something-or-other Emacs, but one was called Fine, for Fine Is Not Emacs, and there was Sine, for Sine Is Not Emacs, and Eine for Ina Is Not Emacs, and MINCE for Mince Is Not Complete Emacs. [Laughter] That was a stripped down imitation. And then, Eine was almost completely rewritten, and the new version was called Zwei, for Zwei Was Eine Initially. [Laughter]