Re: Proposal for an Emacs User Survey

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

When recommending someone to use Emacs, one is recommending free
software, but when one recommends a package repository that can
contain non-free software or software that depends on non-free
software, then one could end up promoting non-free software -- at
which point it is simpler to simply not refer to such repositories.

(standards) References has a good section on it.