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

[Karl Fogel <kfogel@red-bean.com>]

opensourcesurvey <opensourcesurvey@cs.ua.edu> writes:
>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.

They are the same thing -- they are not "two types of software".
Rather, there are two terms for the same type of software, and those
terms each have different emphases.

I realize this not necessarily obvious to those who don't live and
breathe this stuff, so please don't take my comment above as any kind of
criticism.  I just wanted to clarify, as it might not have been clear
from Richard's mail that he was differentiating between terms and
(perhaps) between goals, but not between two different types of
software.

Best,
-Karl

>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:stephen@xemacs.org] 
>Sent: Monday, June 13, 2011 10:24 PM
>To: rms@gnu.org
>Cc: opensourcesurvey; emacs-devel@gnu.org
>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,