On May 11, 5:34 am, Paul Boddie <p...@boddie.org.uk> wrote: > On 10 Mai, 20:36, Patrick Maupin <pmau...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > I've addressed this before. Aahz used a word in an accurate, but to > > you, inflammatory, sense, but it's still accurate -- the man *would* > > force you to pay for the chocolate if you took it. > > Yes, *if* you took it. He isn't forcing you to take it, though, is he? No, but he said a lot of words that I didn't immediately understand about what it meant to be free and that it was free, and then after I bit into it he told me he owned my soul now. > > You're making it sound like whining, but Aahz was simply trying to state a > > fact. > > It is whining if someone says, "I really want that chocolate, but that > nasty man is going to make me pay for it!" But that's not what happened. I mean, he just told me that I might have to give some of it to others later. He didn't mention that if I spread peanut butter on mine before I ate it that I'd have to give people Reese's Peanut Butter cups. > > > The fact is, I know the man would force me to pay for the chocolate, so in > > some cases that enters into the equation and keeps me from wanting the > > chocolate. > > If the man said, "please take the chocolate, but I want you to share > it with your friends", and you refused to do so because you couldn't > accept that condition, would it be right to say, "that man is forcing > me to share chocolate with my friends"? But the thing is, he's *not* making me share the chocolate with any of my friends. He's not even making me share my special peanut butter and chocolate. What he's making me do is, if I give my peanut butter and chocolate to one of my friends, he's making me make *that* friend promise to share. I try not to impose obligations like that on my friends, so obviously the "nice" man with the chocolate isn't my friend! > > This isn't whining; just a common-sense description of > > reality. Personally, I think this use of the word "force" is much > > less inflammatory than the deliberate act of co-opting the word > > "freedom" to mean "if you think you can take this software and do > > anything you want with it, you're going to find out differently when > > we sue you." > > The word "freedom" means a number of things. If you don't like the way > Messrs Finney and Stallman use the term, please take it up with them. > But to say that someone entering a voluntary agreement is "forced" to > do something, when they weren't forced into that agreement in the > first place, is just nonsense. It's like saying that the shopkeeper is > some kind of Darth Vader character who is coercing people to take the > chocolate and then saddling them with obligations against their will. I explained this very carefully before multiple times. Let me give concrete examples -- (1) I have told my children before "if we take that candy, then they will make us pay for it" and (2) if we included (GPLed software) in this (MIT-licensed software) then we will have to change the license. In both these cases, once the decision has been made, then yes, force enters into it. And no, I don't think the average shop keeper is nearly as evil as Darth, or even RMS. Regards, Pat -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
