Perhaps. Transitional solutions go both ways though. A cursory glance at
Reddit's Emacs group is enough to notice not only ignorance of the
philosophy behind GNU, but quite recurrent mockery of what it stands
for. Usually in the form of deriding RMS. For the most recent example,
one user comments under abrochard's survey post: "So, will you be
censoring the survey to maintain ideological purity, like rms
insisted?", to which abrochard responds: "I agree with you. The
discussion around Melpa is a big factor as to why the survey is
happening in parallel to the gnu project."
I'm not saying the obfuscation is purposeful either in the case of
`MELPA' imitating the name of the existing `GNU ELPA', or of Adrien
calling his survey *The* Emacs User survey", but what I do think is that
all non-GNU initiatives that affect perception of GNU, particularly the
ones that clearly do not share the GNU philosophy (the survey referred
to `GNU/Linux' as `Linux', for example), would seem much more
transparent if they were very clearly and visibly labeled as unofficial.
My hope, of course, would be that these initiatives could respect the
GNU philosophy, even if they did not share it.