I think the key is the meaning of the word "distribute." I believe it is generally accepted that using MySQL in a web based application provided as a service doesn't constitute distribution (though there are some questions about situations when the app is hosted on servers operated by a 3rd party).
As noted, these influences can be very disentangle from any real-world analysis.
There was an interesting study a few years back that looked at the "outcomes" of a cohort of people who had all been admitted to an Ivy League school. Part of the study group attended and graduated from the Ivy League school they were admitted to. The control group ended up matriculating elsewhere for whatever reason.
Past studies showed at a significant improvement in earning potential for Ivy League grads, but they didn't have a distinguished control group. What this recent study found was that for most students of similar qualification (all judged to be Ivy League material by the admissions boards at Ivy Leage schools), attending an Ivy conferred no obvious advantage compared to attending a non-Ivy.
The only difference was for students who came from more challenging backgrounds, those whose families may have flirted with poverty and/or didn't have significant educational attainment. In those cases, attending an Ivy conferred some advantage over going elsewhere.
I remember this article and I recall the conclusion it reached was that the students from poorer backgrounds benefited so dramatically because they were indoctrinated with the culture of the ruling class in the Ivy League and would likely not have been elsewhere.
In some countries (Germany for example), students have been herded into career tracks at a fairly early age. So, some 13 year old may be sent on a path towards becoming an auto mechanic, while another is guided off to become a surgeon or some other professional. I'm sure there are ways to break out of your track, but there is a big formalized system working against you.
In the US, someone can spend all of high school in auto shop, and still have a chance of changing directions and ending up with a successful career at 33 that some bureaucrat never would never have predicted 20 years earlier. If may take him longer than the kid whose parents and teachers were guiding them towards medicine or business from age 13, but the doors are open.
I think this is a strength of the US, both economically, and with respect to various liberal, democratic, egalitarian ideals. It isn't perfect though. There are certainly people would be happier and better off if they started learning a trade at an earlier age.
You do know that a lot of people going to private schools aren't paying full-price, right?
Need based financial aid grants are often available (ie not loans) and sometimes they are substantial. I've known people who have paid less for a private school than they would have at a state school.
Yeah, I guess I didn't really consider that -- based on how the question was phrased I was trying to consider the whole range of potential costs of college from the most outrageously high to free.
It's a fair outer bound to place. I just like to be really clear about the fact that people don't necessarily pay sticker price at private schools. I've volunteered for my alma mater at college fairs and there are a lot of people who are interested and then freak when they see the tuition. I have to imagine that there are an equal number who don't even stop by our table because they've done just enough research to think "expensive."
How about a "nutrition chart" requirement for each college of any type? It would disclose the lower, more average charge per student over 4 years computed by each college using federal standards.
Secondly, the government should run the loan program themselves for public universities, since it's a lot cheaper for it to offer loans than to subsidize banks to do the same.
The government used to have more involvement in the student loan programs. My father started up a non-profit under the state board of regents to service guaranteed student loans in Utah in the late 70s or early 80s after the feds passed some big program. They did quite well for a few years, until the regents made them transfer everything to various banks and shut the thing down because it had the potential to be fabulously profitable.
Concerned why? Are you concerned about someone stealing your proprietary code?
Or are you worried because you have made unreleased proprietary modifications to GPLed code and you are worried that running your modified version on another parties servers might be considered "distribution," and give the host the option of distributing it to other parties?
I don't know about data warehousing with spatial data, but two guys I was taking two a couple of months ago were both working on web apps that worked with geospatial data. Both of them were using postgres for geospatial use and endorsed it over both mySQL and MS-SQL.
