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I wrote to the address in the GPLv2 license notice (2022)

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Re: I wrote to the address in the GPLv2 license notice (2022)

#331

Post by layer8 »

wbl wrote: post #329
Someone wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have no idea where else I'd look for stamps should I want to include them on a SAE I was sending to said country I would try to buy them online from their post office. For the USA, there is https://www.usps.com/business/postage-options.htm : “Print Labels Online with Click-N-Ship With your free USPS.com account, you can pay for postage and print just one label or a batch of shipping labels online” Germany has ( h…

You use an International Reply Coupon https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_reply_coupon

You obviously read neither the blog post nor the Wikipedia article.

Re: I wrote to the address in the GPLv2 license notice (2022)

#332

Post by tialaramex »

mrob wrote: post #108
graemep wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a weird mix in the UK, distances are measured in miles, and speed limits are set in miles per hour, but fuel is sold in litres, for example. People get very worked up about it too. People got very worked up about a government proposal to allow people to put imperial units on food in larger type than metric (at the moment it has to be metric larger - or at least the same size). Everything in engineering and scie…

Distances in the UK are measured in miles and yards (or fractions of a mile). Google Maps gets this wrong and uses miles and feet. I don't think many people in the UK have a good intuition for how far 500ft is.

Only road distances for cars are in miles and yards. The British railways continue to use chains (which are not used for any other ordinary activity) and non-road traffic is often in metres or kilometres as appropriate.

Some of those "Metric martyr" types, the kind of people who think anything which changed after they were 35 is an abomination, but somehow anything which changed ten years before they were born has never been any other way, will vandalize legal stuff which uses (in their opinion) the wrong units. So if you put a (legal and reasonable) 1.5km distance sign on a cycle route, but some car driver who thinks sane units are fascism sees it, they might smash it to pieces which is annoying.

There has been a very gradual lean towards sanity, after all my mother was taught decimal currency because it was forthcoming when she was at school, her parents had used a non-decimal currency system. When I was a teenager I still had coins which, though they were treated as their modern decimal value, if you read their faces had a non-decimal value printed on them, because it's too expensive to replace the currency when you switch.

When I was a child I would buy a quarter pound of sweets. At the turn of the century I'd ask for, and receive, 100 grams or 200 grams as I felt, but most customers would use pounds (although legally they'd be served in grams). These days everybody else would likely also ask in grams. So it's changing, it's just very slow.

Re: I wrote to the address in the GPLv2 license notice (2022)

#333

Post by self_awareness »

MadnessASAP wrote: post #293
davisr wrote: post #273

This is funny because I was the operations assistant (office secretary) at the time we received this letter, and I remember it because of the distinct postage.

How wonderful! Since the game of the day seems to be the technicalities of the minutiae, could you explain the decision to send the GPLv3 vs GPLv2? Is this a request that happens often?

The sender didn't specify the version in his request, so I find it natural that they've sent him the latest version.

Re: I wrote to the address in the GPLv2 license notice (2022)

#334

Post by kccqzy »

NoboruWataya wrote: post #3

Not sure if it's being exaggerated for comedic purposes but it is interesting to me how alien the act of sending a letter by post is to the author. Granted I don't send them very often but I wouldn't think much of it if I had to. But I guess younger people and particularly those in tech may genuinely never need a reason to send a letter (or, it seems, write an address by hand).

I don't send letters by post but I often need to send packages by post. Perhaps it's returning some merchandise where the merchant didn't have free shipping. Perhaps it's shipping a security key to a close friend so I can have offsite backup of a key. When I moved, I got rid of my book collection by asking friends which books they wanted and I shipped it to them (media mail is cheap).

It's efficient to transmit information over the internet, but it's still essential to send physical items by post. When I visit USPS branches, I always see plenty of people mailing packages.

Re: I wrote to the address in the GPLv2 license notice (2022)

#335

Post by overtomanu »

creaturemachine wrote: post #207
Misdicorl wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the goal should be to ensure that anyone who wants to do a thing can, with as few third party requirements as possible. This is a good starting point, but if you have no barriers then you get abuse problems which is why email is terrible. I remember being horrified in the 90s about attempts to charge 1 cent per email. Now I long for a world where that actually happened.

You're paying that cent, but in the form of endless ads hijacking your consciousness.

you can still do some setup and access mail by using applications like thunderbird, which have no ads.

Re: I wrote to the address in the GPLv2 license notice (2022)

#336

Post by NelsonMinar »

munchler wrote: post #28
WaitWaitWha wrote: post #18

This 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…

> flash card (smallish, lined cards for taking notes) These are called “index cards” in the US, although you can certainly use them to make flash cards if you want. Source: Am old enough to have used index cards unironically.

my flash cards all store at least 32 GB of data but are so tiny I keep losing them.

Re: I wrote to the address in the GPLv2 license notice (2022)

#337

Post by krisoft »

dheera wrote: post #242
ethbr1 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slightly alternate take: this post (and the fact that FSF still replies to paper mail) is about accessibility Which changes as times change. In the 90s, requiring access to the internet and an email address would have been exclusionary and decreased access. Now, 30 years later, it's reversed and physical mail is difficult. But from another perspective... the goal should be to ensure that anyone who wants to do a thin…

> is universally accessible by design I disagree. It requires taking time out of business hours, and they don't pay you your salary while you line up multiple times for 30 minutes each. I've sometimes had to line up for 2 hours total (4 times) just to mail one thing. Once to ask "how do i mail this", once to ask for a pen (couldn't cut the line because a Karen wouldn't let me), once because I filled the wrong form, e…

I mean it is the fallback method. The solution for the "I never heard of this internet thing, or something else is preventing me from finding the licence online" problem.

Almost everyone will just use their search engine to find this page: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.en.html

What can you do to serve the licence to those who can't or won't do that (for whatever reason)? I think it is hard to find something more universally accessible to serve that edge case.

You describe your story of how sending a letter went to you, and I admit it sounds like a bit of a pain. But you managed to do it. And by the sound of it you were totally novice at it. (didn't even bring your own pen!) Someone can do the same thing you did anywhere from Nairobi, McMurdo, Pyongyang, or Vigánpetend.

It is not "universally accessible" in the "easy and comfortable" sense. It is "universally accessible" in the "almost anywhere where humans live you can access this service" sense.

Re: I wrote to the address in the GPLv2 license notice (2022)

#338

Post by layer8 »

eru wrote: post #314
palata wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I am a millennial, so most likely older than the author. Not having envelopes at the ready is one thing, but ordering stamps... on eBay??? And then wasting a few envelopes because writing down the address is unusual? That kind of blew my mind. I am a software engineer, and I always have a paper notebook and a pen next to my keyboard to write down stuff. I guess this all tells me I'm getting old :-).

> And then wasting a few envelopes because writing down the address is unusual? That kind of blew my mind. Some people really have terrible hand writing. And dyslexia is a thing, too.

That weren’t the reasons stated, though.

Re: I wrote to the address in the GPLv2 license notice (2022)

#339

Post by sudobash1 »

gwd wrote: post #14

> 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...

This thread is more interesting to me than the article itself. I am the complete opposite. I always have a pen in my pocket along with a really small (2"x3") notebook, and I absolutely use it all the time.

Personally, I find pen and a memo pad much handier than a phone. There is no unlocking, searching, or loading. And I can write much faster than tap a little screen keyboard. Even more importantly, on my memo pad there are no notifications to completely sidetrack my lizard brain.

But aside from the practical, it is also just such a nice change of pace to use analog technologies when I can. I use my computer and write software all day. It's good to get a break sometimes.

Re: I wrote to the address in the GPLv2 license notice (2022)

#340

Post by [deleted] »

bongodongobob wrote: post #220
ryandrake wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not sure if it's being exaggerated for comedic purposes but it is interesting to me how alien the act of sending a letter by post is to the author. It was pretty recognizable as trolling--the very good and clever "old school Internet" style of trolling where it sounds plausible and sincere, but then you get done reading it and say, "Oh lawd, he got me! Good one!" The kind of writing that people used to spend a lot…

> I refuse to believe there are adults out there where things like using a pen to write and mailing a letter are alien concepts that need to be learned. Well, believe it. I'm in my 40s and haven't written a letter since I was a kid. Why would I ever have to? Ask someone who was born in 2003 if they've ever written and mailed a letter. 99% are going to say no.

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