Wow. It's no surprise that rms lacks empathy or social grace, but I'm kind of shocked one man's availability could single-handedly delay a release of a project like emacs. What if the poor chap had got hit by a bus?
I suspect that in this case it was easier to wait for the person to be available rather than transitioning to someone else.
BTW, since then Emacs development has been handed over to other folk and development has really picked up pace, including being (finally!) hosted in Git.
