I've read somewhere that Emacs was important for the development of the idea of Free Software. How can that be if it's just a piece of software? Or is there more to it?

There is even a [church of Emacs][1]. Additionally, Emacs is also part of [hacker folklore][2].


  [1]: http://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/gospel.html
  [2]: https://www.cs.utah.edu/~elb/folklore/afs-paper/node6.html