Messages in this thread |  | | | Subject | Re: Funding GPL projects or funding the GPL? | | From | Alan Cox <> | | 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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