On 05/13/10 00:53, Patrick Maupin wrote: > On May 12, 2:19 am, Lie Ryan <lie.1...@gmail.com> wrote: >> On 05/12/10 06:50, Patrick Maupin wrote: >> >> >> >>> On May 11, 5:34 am, Paul Boddie <p...@boddie.org.uk> wrote: >>>> On 10 Mai, 20:36, Patrick Maupin <pmau...@gmail.com> wrote: >>>>> 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! >> >> The analogy breaks here; unlike chocolate, the value of software/source >> code, if shared, doesn't decrease (in fact, many software increases its >> value when shared liberally, e.g. p2p apps). > > Absolutely true. Actually, the analogy was really pretty broken to > start with. It wasn't my analogy -- I was just trying to play > along :-)
All analogy is broken, except if the analogy is the exact situation; but then again, if the analogy is the exact situation, then it's not an analogy :-) -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
