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Subject: Re: Funding GPL projects or funding the GPL?
From: Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>
To: David Schwartz <davids@webmaster.com>
Cc: davidsen@tmr.com, Alexander Viro <viro@math.psu.edu>,
       linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
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Date: 01 Aug 2002 14:48:01 +0100
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On Thu, 2002-08-01 at 10:32, David Schwartz wrote:
> 	No matter how many proofs you have or how good they are, I won't believe it 
> because this fails the giggle test. Here's a simple counter-proof. I want to 
> write an SQL server from scratch. I create two teams, one with $50,000 and 
> one with $5,000,000. You can honestly tell me that it's equally like that 
> either team will produce a higher quality SQL server?

Intuition is misleading. It mostly depends which of the teams has the
good engineers and smart management. The .com bust is just one example
of that.

> 	This reminds me of the proofs that supposedly showed that locking up 
> convicted criminals for longer didn't lower the crime rate. Are we honestly 
> supposed to believe that otherwise honest people commit more crimes to make 
> up the difference?

In some cases yes. There are a whole variety of well understood reasons
why this occurs - probability of capture not length of capture is the
deterrent. Most criminals won't reoffend after a short or long sentence
(and there is little evidence that length of sentence decreases the
probability of reoffence. In addition there is a category of crime (that
involving a dispute between two parties) where one person being sent to
jail causes their entire family and relations to become 'criminals'. 

I don't however see the relationship between the two, other than both
being demonstrations that you must do the actual science and statistics
before you rely on intuition.

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