If I'm understanding, I don't even get why you would go through the effort.
It sounds like the author wants to add these features to main-line emacs, and expect other people to maintain it while he holds some kind of copyright.
Emacs is one of the last pieces of software people would want to "move fast and break things". And what does copyright or ownership even get you?
They took something existing that's been worked on since probably before he was born, agreed to the license, and added features only they have reviewed and tested. And I guess expected to face little resistance to get his code in to be tested and maintained by everyone else.
It doesn't even sound like it's a big deal to maintain their branch. They said mainline is merged in every hour. The hardest part sounds like adding a different URL in your package manager and dealing with a rare merge conflict (which you could easily put off for a long time if you don't care about bleeding edge).
It sounds like the author wants to add these features to main-line emacs, and expect other people to maintain it while he holds some kind of copyright.
Emacs is one of the last pieces of software people would want to "move fast and break things". And what does copyright or ownership even get you?
They took something existing that's been worked on since probably before he was born, agreed to the license, and added features only they have reviewed and tested. And I guess expected to face little resistance to get his code in to be tested and maintained by everyone else.
It doesn't even sound like it's a big deal to maintain their branch. They said mainline is merged in every hour. The hardest part sounds like adding a different URL in your package manager and dealing with a rare merge conflict (which you could easily put off for a long time if you don't care about bleeding edge).
So weird is extremely accurate.