Comment by rvz

Nope. I think you are confused since Herdr was free software and licensed under AGPL 3.0 [0] before it was VC funded.

One (emacs) gets millions in donations via the FSF and the other get little to no money or donations for being "free software" from the start despite both of them being "free software".

[0] https://github.com/herdrdev/herdr/blob/a57b97285c3308fbdcc16...