RE: GPL & commercial software, the critical distinction (fwd)

The Mafia has had two primary characteristics:

a) the use of force
b) trade in elicit and prohibited goods and services

Unless you can claim a reference to a Mafia at some time and place that
had neither characteristics and a market which they monopolized which
lacked any other intervention, then this all is utterly irrelevant to
the discussion at hand.

	Matt

> -----Original Message-----

> > >That's inaccurate. The Mafia pre-dated the US by several 
> hundred years if

On Thu, Oct 08, 1998 at 04:14:32PM -0700, Matthew James Gering wrote:
> 
> The Mafia has had two primary characteristics:
> 
> a) the use of force

wouldn't this characteristic define the mafia as a "state" to some
degree?

-- 
1024/D9C69DF9 steve mynott steve@tightrope.demon.co.uk http://www.pineal.com/

the capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly
greater than that of any other animals.  some of their most esteemed
inventions have no other apparent purpose, for example, the dinner
party of more than two, the epic poem, and the science of metaphysics.  -- h. l.

--
On Thu, Oct 08, 1998 at 04:14:32PM -0700, Matthew James
Gering wrote:
> >  The Mafia has had two primary characteristics:  a) the
> > use of force

At 10:24 AM 10/9/98 +0100, Steve Mynott wrote:
> wouldn't this characteristic define the mafia as a "state"
> to some degree?

A state is merely a mafia that has succeeded in crushing its
competitors by force.

    --digsig
         James A. Donald
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     4HqTzfVhadbFtw7OnMn+adlAQibN0JlmTgUmw22Wt
-----------------------------------------------------
We have the right to defend ourselves and our property, because 
of the kind of animals that we are. True law derives from this 
right, not from the arbitrary power of the omnipotent state.


http://www.jim.com/jamesd/      James A. Donald