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

[opensourcesurvey]

Richard,

Thank you for the comments. Our apologies for not clearly differentiating the 
two types of software. In analyzing the results and reporting the data, we will 
make sure to take this into account. For you information, we have sent the 
survey to other projects that would fall into the category of Free Software.

-- Jeff

Assistant Professor
University of Alabama
(v) 205-348-9829  (f) 205-348-0219
http://www.cs.ua.edu/~carver


-----Original Message-----
From: Stephen J. Turnbull [mailto:address@hidden 
Sent: Monday, June 13, 2011 10:24 PM
To: address@hidden
Cc: opensourcesurvey; address@hidden
Subject: Please don't refer to Emacs as "open source"

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,