Who cares about popularity? It often brings more trouble than anything. Emacs is a gem and will probably stay like that for decades to come.

The only thing I wonder about is how it is possible that Stallman seems to have never heard about org-mode which is one of the main reasons I use Emacs and I don't think there exists anything that even comes close.

I manage my todos with org-mode, generate chord sheets of my songs and even produce my website from org files.