Quote From abababa:
It would be more 'normal' to add the name of the developer into acknowledgements, with brief detail on their contribution. The idea of a reference is something someone can find and read; it's a bit odd to make an email exchange publicly available (and if it's not, what's the point of referencing it). Whilst it's possible, you'd envision an email exchange to be referenced if it's something social-sciencey reflecting on context and perspectives; not because it explains how something works.
Of course I would acknowledge the developer of the software used to produce the results in my thesis. It goes without saying.
This does put it on you to convey how things work themselves, but if you're confident to publish you should be confident to describe how you got the results, so it should - hopefully - be straightforward.
You only convey how things work to the point where you can fully justify the results in front of you.
The risk you run if you cite it as justification/explanation, is it being interpreted as 'we didn't know how the black box worked, but we got the explanation of the guy who made the box, and present it here as fact'. This may not be as problematic as it sounds, but is it probably the reason it's rare.
Of course I wouldn't be citing the email as justification for why my results look the way they do. I understand how the 'black box' works pretty well. Did you read my post above? What I intend to cite is a simple functionality that one would typically find declared in the User's Guide. The literature for this software just happens to be quite vague. The information was left out inadvertently (as advised by the developer). Nonetheless it is important that I mention because it facilitates a certain discussion in my thesis, by no means does it replace the entire argument or justify any of my results.
Cheers!
