If I give you an airspeed limitation, wouldn't you expect me to tell you if that's IAS, CAS, EAS, TAS or Mach number?
If I give you a manoeuvring speed, wouldn't you expect me to tell you what you are and are not permitted to do with the controls above that speed?
If I give you a wind limit, wouldn't you expect me to tell you what I meant?
So put another way:
Real world - it only matters if you crash, and are attempting to explain to a non-pilot, frequent passenger judge, how you left the runway in a 38 knot gust you were warned about and knew was:
possible, and
was greater than the certified aircraft limit.
How did you measure the "38 knot gust" during which you claim I left the runway? Was it at tower height half a mile away, or at the surface? Did you read it off the INS?
Here's what the paper decurion cites has to say:
Depending on the way the data are analyzed crosswind derived from the INS system includes or excludes wind gusts. At least one large aircraft manufacturer uses the INS data to derive a crosswind by plotting the crosswind component as function of time. The crosswind at the time the aircraft is 10 meters above the ground is then read off the plot. Engineering judgment is used in fairing the data. Another manufacturer has a different approach in determining the crosswind value during flight tests. During the flight tests the pilots of this aircraft manufacture requested the tower wind when the aircraft was close to a height of 10 meters from the ground. The mean wind given was then used to compute the crosswind during the crosswind certification flights. If this last aircraft manufacturer had used the approach of fairing INS data as mentioned before, the demonstrated crosswind capability for one of their aircraft would have been at least 10 knots higher than presently mentioned in the AFM of this aircraft.