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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)

#401

Post by VikingCoder »

Suppafly wrote: post #294
VikingCoder wrote: post #134

I think these licenses are incredibly useful. I have a really, really dumb question. Why don't we have more licenses and contracts like this? Do we just need to set up a foundation that drafts them and makes them freely available to use? Like, for instance, "Hi, Mark - we'd like to offer you a job here at our daycare, but first we need you to look over this contract and sign it." This contract says, roughly, that if…

>Like, shouldn't we have more contracts like this? We have tons of them, they are written by lawyers.

I wish they were standardized and freely available.

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

#402

Post by tshaddox »

Misdicorl wrote: post #192
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…

> 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.

Ironically, the amount of effort I expend dealing with spam from the postal service is much larger than the amount of effort I expend dealing with email.

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

#403

Post by SoftTalker »

bongodongobob wrote: post #311
SoftTalker wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just sent in my taxes by USPS mail a couple of weeks ago. Long after online payments were available, I would pay my monthly bills by writing checks and sending them in the mail, as that process actually took me less time than logging in to five or six different websites and navigating through their online payment flows.

That's very uncommon. All my bills are set to autopay on my credit card. Who manually pays bills? You don't need to click the buttons every month.

Payment to a credit card often involves extra fees. And I don't want to give them autopay access to my checking account.

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

#404

Post by acuozzo »

Alex-Programs wrote: post #248
01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not even a whiteboard marker? I'm in the US so I use permanent marker to write my lawyers phone number on my arm before protests

As a Brit, the concept of "My lawyer" is slightly unfamiliar. The average Brit doesn't "have a lawyer"; they would only find a lawyer if they had a specific need, eg being accused of a crime or wanting to write a contract etc. And yet as far as I can tell, most middle class Americans seem to refer to "their lawyer". Do you pay a monthly fee? Are they a criminal defence lawyer, or something broader? How often do you t…

> most middle class Americans seem to refer to "their lawyer"

I've only run into this among the so-called "upper middle class" here (e.g., physicians making $500K+/yr) and even then it's pretty rare.

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

#405

Post by odo1242 »

overtomanu wrote: post #335
creaturemachine wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Or use an adblocker

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

#406

Post by ajb »

__turbobrew__ wrote: post #389
giancarlostoro wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > Standard mail forwarding lasts 12 months. You can pay to extend mail forwarding for 6, 12, or 18 more months (18 months is the maximum). That's kind of awkward when you consider people will find that address for source code where that license file just wont be updated for decades to come, if at all.

We need DNS, but for mail addresses.

One thing I've been meaning to try, but never got round to, is to stick a URL on an envelope, pointing at a page with an address, and see if the mail (royal mail, in my case) actually deliver it. I suspect they would but that it would take a few extra days. It's no worse than some of the addresses that they do deliver.

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

#407

Post by brian-armstrong »

AlbinoDrought wrote: post #224
bluGill wrote: post #30

At least he got a response. Meaning the address didn't change mostly. A few years back I worked on an embedded linux project. For our first "alpha" release one of the testers read through the license agreement (as opposed to scrolling past all that legalese like most people do) and found the address to write to to get all the GPL source, he then send a letter to the address and it was returned to sender, invalid addr…

The Free Software Foundation closed their office at 51 Franklin St in August 2024 [1]. Their new mailing address is on 31 Milk Street [2]. If this test was reproduced today, we may see different results ;) [1]: https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/fsf-office-closing-party [2]: https://www.fsf.org/about/contact/mailing

Did they also force RMS to move out?

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

#408

Post by krisoft »

dheera wrote: post #379
krisoft wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I mean, part of the problem is I didn't own a pen at the time. I have multiple computers and phones, I thought that was the interface to the post-2000 world. I do have paint, but that's a little clumsy. I grudgingly own a box of BIC pens now, but ... It's like requiring people to own a horse to do something these days. And in past experience during school days, those goddamn BIC pens all go bad (ink dries up or somet…

Oh, i absolutely get you! Was not intending to pen-shame you in any way. Just used it to illustrate that the postal process worked (eventually, and with a lot of inconvenience) even though you were not best prepared for it.

But i have been exactly where you are. We were having a book club and trying to vote on the next book to read, and turns out none of us out of twenty literature loving people had a single pen on us. So yeah, that is for sure the current reality.

> usually I just end up drawing a cat on the signature line.

Thats awesome! Do the they accept it usually?

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

#409

Post by hermitdev »

dheera wrote: post #379
krisoft wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I mean, part of the problem is I didn't own a pen at the time. I have multiple computers and phones, I thought that was the interface to the post-2000 world. I do have paint, but that's a little clumsy. I grudgingly own a box of BIC pens now, but ... It's like requiring people to own a horse to do something these days. And in past experience during school days, those goddamn BIC pens all go bad (ink dries up or somet…

> I realize this all probably sounds very silly to someone born before 1980

I was born after 1980 and I think you're beating a dead horse, here. You're conflating accessibility with convenience. Not just with this comment, but others you've made in this thread.

> those goddamn BIC pens all go bad (ink dries up or something), before I use even 5% of one of them.

Grab the pen by the end opposite the nib, give it a good shake for a few seconds, lick the nib, scribble on a scrap piece of paper until it starts writing again. Problem solved. You can't resurrect a dead laptop or computer by licking and shaking it (at least I've never succeeded in doing so).

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

#410

Post by Scoundreller »

brian-armstrong wrote: post #407
AlbinoDrought wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Free Software Foundation closed their office at 51 Franklin St in August 2024 [1]. Their new mailing address is on 31 Milk Street [2]. If this test was reproduced today, we may see different results ;) [1]: https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/fsf-office-closing-party [2]: https://www.fsf.org/about/contact/mailing

Did they also force RMS to move out?

Maybe he refused to move, so they did?
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