[Foundation-l] Release of squid log data

[Gwern Branwen]

On  0, Rich Holton <richholton at gmail.com> scribbled:
> Dedalus wrote:
> > Do these university offer to make a significant monetary donation to the
> > WMF?
> >
> > Dedalus
>
> Hmmm...If they did, would that be better or worse?
>
> -Rich Holton
>
> w:en:Rholton

I think it'd be worse. Anytime money changes hand, or might, there's going to be conflict of interest. It's easy to say that it's only a *possibility*, that 'we' aren't going to really have any conflict of interest, but if the extensive literature on rationality and heuristics and biases has taught me anything, it's that even forewarned and educated persons fail prey to obvious irrationalities (even the very irrationalities they were warned about!).

No, much better to just avoid that entire quagmire entirely and keep it on the basis of 'Are you going to abuse this information, and are you going to do something worthwhile enough that it justifies the risk we're taking by giving this data to you?'

--
gwern
OSS body AVN GSGI OTCIXS NSOF ISEC & SEIDM Mexico
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