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efaq: Difference between Emacs and XEmacs

 
 8.6 What is the difference between Emacs and XEmacs (formerly Lucid Emacs)?
 ===========================================================================
 
 XEmacs is a branch version of Emacs.  It was first called Lucid Emacs,
 and was initially derived from a prerelease version of Emacs 19.  In
 this FAQ, we use the name “Emacs” only for the official version.
 
    Emacs and XEmacs each come with Lisp packages that are lacking in the
 other.  The two versions have some significant differences at the Lisp
 programming level.  Their current features are roughly comparable,
 though the support for some operating systems, character sets and
 specific packages might be quite different.
 
    Some XEmacs code has been contributed to Emacs, and we would like to
 use other parts, but the earlier XEmacs maintainers did not always keep
 track of the authors of contributed code, which makes it impossible for
 the FSF to get copyright papers signed for that code.  (The FSF requires
 these papers for all the code included in the Emacs release, aside from
 generic C support packages that retain their separate identity and are
 not integrated into the code of Emacs proper.)
 
    If you want to talk about these two versions and distinguish them,
 please call them “Emacs” and “XEmacs.” To contrast “XEmacs” with “GNU
 Emacs” would be misleading, since XEmacs too has its origin in the work
 of the GNU Project.  Terms such as “Emacsen” and “(X)Emacs” are not
 wrong, but they are not very clear, so it is better to write “Emacs and
 XEmacs.”
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