A few countries I'll be visiting this summer still sell International Reply Coupons. It might be interesting to pick some up and see how difficult it is to exchange them. Would a PostNL point even know what to do with one?
I wrote to the address in the GPLv2 license notice (2022)
41–50 of 585 posts
Re: I wrote to the address in the GPLv2 license notice (2022)
#42Perhaps the FSF got confused about which license the author was referring to, or perhaps they intentionally mailed back GPL v3 — this isn't the first time they haven't been generous.
In the old days when they released GPL v3, Linus Torvalds considered it "not the same license at all". He felt betrayed because the FSF "try to sneak in these new (tivoization) rules and try to force everybody to upgrade". People could fork the Kernel and relicense the fork in a way that prevented him from merging their improvements upstream. He referred to the FSF's move as "dishonest", "sneaky" and "immoral" and decided he would "never have anything to do with the FSF again".
Re: I wrote to the address in the GPLv2 license notice (2022)
#43> The first thing that came to attention, the paper that the text was printed on wasn’t an A4, it was smaller and not a size I was familiar with. I measured it and found that it’s a US letter size paper at about 21.5cm x 27.9cm. I completely forgot that the US, Canada, and a few other countries don’t follow the standard international paper sizes, even though I had written about it earlier. I guess I shouldn't be surp…
Yes, in the USA letter size is the standard. A3,4 don't exist. It isn't confusing because I would guess that more than half of all people in the USA don't even know that letter size isn't the standard everywhere. I was probably in my late 20s before I found out that Europe doesn't use the same size paper as we in the USA do. I can remember exactly once that I encountered it in the wild (I was at a conference and some…
[flagged]
Re: I wrote to the address in the GPLv2 license notice (2022)
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
The paper size and foreign stamps make sense, but I must say the inability to use a pen surprised me a little more.
I'm not an American and I did write letters in my country of origin as a kid, but one thing that annoys me about US-style envelopes to this day is that they have no lines for address - you're just expected to line text up on your own correctly. If you're used to writing on lined paper because that's the standard in your country (including envelopes!), it can be frustrating. The envelopes I'm used to look like this: h…
Do they still say Министерство связи СССР ?
Re: I wrote to the address in the GPLv2 license notice (2022)
#45[deleted]
Re: I wrote to the address in the GPLv2 license notice (2022)
#46This was written in 2022. Do people still know how to postal-mail things? Asking as the acquisition of envelope, paper and stamps read like a new adventure for the author. I make a practice of sending (picture) postcards to each of my descendants, when i arrive at a new place. It is a very rare occasion when I can find them, even rarer for the vendor to know what they are. Once the vendor was insisting that a flash c…
What places don't have postcards? Whenever I go to places in the UK, tourist tat shops will often have hundreds of them in every flavour of souvenir
Re: I wrote to the address in the GPLv2 license notice (2022)
#47I'm interested in hearing from someone at FSF (and I used to know someone, but I don't think he's there any more), who can tell us how often this has happened. I can't imagine it's a frequent occurrence.
As I implied in my top level comment, it should happen more often than it likely does. If you work on a commercial project with any GPL code ask your test group who has done that and when - if you don't see a lot of hands go up then your test group isn't doing their job. (if you are only automated tests, then I assume you have an automated test to send this letter and verify the response)
Re: I wrote to the address in the GPLv2 license notice (2022)
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, in the USA letter size is the standard. A3,4 don't exist. It isn't confusing because I would guess that more than half of all people in the USA don't even know that letter size isn't the standard everywhere. I was probably in my late 20s before I found out that Europe doesn't use the same size paper as we in the USA do. I can remember exactly once that I encountered it in the wild (I was at a conference and some…
[flagged]
No, letter is used throughout North America and in parts of South America.
Re: I wrote to the address in the GPLv2 license notice (2022)
#49> Writing the address on the envelope was awkward, as I haven’t used a pen in several years; it took a few attempts and some wasted envelopes... Wow -- I mean, sure, I don't use a pen that often, but I'm sure I hand-write something at least once a month...
I can't even remember the last time I've used a pen for anything other than writing a check.
Well, there's my minimum of once per month :)
Re: I wrote to the address in the GPLv2 license notice (2022)
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
Like most other weird things in US that pertain to measurements and units thereof, letter-sized paper predates the A-series standard (which originated in Germany). FWIW the latter didn't became an ISO standard until late 20th century. Americans are just very obstinate about those things. It's like the Windows of metrology - backwards compatibility trumps everything else, even when you have utterly bonkers things like…
>Americans are just very obstinate about those things. It's not just obstinance, switching everything to metric in the US would likely cost billions (if not trillions) of dollars. And other countries that have made the switch have often ended up with weird Frankensystems of measurement, like the UK where they mix metric and imperial all the time (plus the weird UK-specific measurements they have like "stone", which i…
Other countries switched. Short term pain for long term gain.