Please don't refer to Emacs as "open source"

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Richard Stallman writes:

 > If you would like our participation in this study, please agree to
 > give the free software movement equal mention in the study's
 > report.

Dr. Carver,

I hope that neither participation in the survey by Emacs developers,
nor what you write in your academic reports will be influenced by
inappropriate pressure of the sort quoted above.  Nevertheless, as a
social scientist myself, I hope that you will give consideration to
the influence of the free software movement as such on the tools and
best practices of distributed software development.

While my academic work is on other topics, in over twenty years of
participation in free, libre, and open source software (FLOSS)
projects, my observation has been that both the *philosophy* and the
*fact* of freedom in FLOSS development have strongly influenced
distributed development practice.  This is true of both extremes of
"open" free software projects like Emacs and in "closed" commercial
products (I can't be more specific about the product, but the company
is Amazon.com), as well as many projects of hybrid nature.  This
influence has several channels, including tools, workflows, and
attitudes of developers toward their work.  I hope your survey is
designed to capture this influence where present, and if not, I
suggest you take care not to overlook it when it is present in the
responses to open-ended questions.

Just-one-Dismal-Scientist's-opinion-ly y'rs,