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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)

#521
post #215

> After a few weeks of waiting, I eventually received the ‘African Daisy global forever vert pair’ stamp which was round! I should have noticed that the seller sent me the item using stamps at a much lower denomination that those I had ordered. Oh well. Wild that so many commenters don't see the satire dripping from the post. Is it just a UK thing to never take things at face value?

I’m surprised this stamp seller didn’t cover half the envelope in 5 cent stamps. That’s what I usually get on the envelopes from stamp sellers: decades old stamps from the “bad investment” portions from stamp collectors.

I used to order fragrance samples on eBay, The first order I received from them had a 10 1/2 pence stamp attached. I was perplexed as the half pence (ha'penny, pronounced HAPE-KNEE) coin had been discontinued in 1984, 30 years ago at the time, and I'd only seen them in an old collection of coins from my parents. Also the portrait of the Queen (I'm from the UK) was a bit outdated.

I contacted the seller and it turned out her husband was a stamp collector and gave her his low value cast-offs to use as postage. I found it amazing that 30+ year old stamps were still valid. It's only recently they've become invalid postage as now stamps require a barcode.

Also I used to get items delivered to my office, and the office manager's husband was a stamp collector, so she used to ask to keep the stamps I got (I used to order electronic components from all over the world) so this completed the philatelist cycle.

Another old currency anecdote. I used to work on the checkouts at a supermarket in Cambridge circa 2009 and at least two times we'd get visiting academics from the USA who had studied in the UK years before and they'd try to pay with currency they'd had from the time, except it was the awesome old pre-decimal money (We switched to decimal in 1971). I found it quaint that they thought it was still valid and thought to bring it with them.

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

#522
post #379

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 mean, part of the problem is I didn't own a pen at the time.

I find this mind-boggling.

I immediately came up with a parallel -- "they wanted me to walk to the counter but I do not own shoes."

Which took me to the universe of Pixar's _Wall-E_ and now I can't help but imagine that the subset of "people born after 1980" are helpless in their floating chairs and apparently I am aberrant because I learned to walk, and that makes me old.

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

#523
post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also does not help you to update the address later.

It does if it leads to a web page with an address. What happens when all project maintainers die and the source code disappears?

It does, but I think the person you were responding to was referring to the "This should not require any Internet access to view" part.

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

#524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other countries switched. Short term pain for long term gain.

The trouble is there is just very little gain. It really just doesn't matter. All the systems are fine, they all work. If you come live here, you'll adjust after 2 years. If I moved to Europe, I would adjust in 2 years. Once in a blue moon you have to bother with converting units but c'est la vie . There's bigger things to worry about.

> All the systems are fine

This is not true and that's trivially verifiable.

No calculator, no references, no Google:

How many inches are in 5 and three-quarter miles?

How much does 5 & 3/4 gallons of water weigh?

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

#525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need DNS, but for mail addresses.

Maybe DNS for mail addresses is like a Post Office Box number? :-) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_office_box With 20/20 hindsight, if the FSF had used a P.O. Box number in the license, the license addresses would always be correct even if the FSF office changed addressed or (as now) was no longer maintained. Of course, the cost of a P.O. box over 40 years would have added up to thousands of dollars and that is le…

> Of course, the cost of a P.O. box over 40 years would have added up to thousands of dollars and that is less money for FSF advocacy. And time spent going to the post office to check the box would also have taken away from advocacy time.

To be fair, renting office space in downtown Boston also adds up to tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of dollars, every year. By comparison, $500 dollars a year [0] for a medium PO Box (in the lobby of the building for their new office, no less!) is a steal.

[0] https://poboxes.usps.com/findBox.html?q=02196

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

#526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are not particularly obstinate, we just have no strong reason to change. Metric is already used in areas where it actually matters (e.g. STEM)

> Metric is already used in areas where it actually matters (e.g. STEM) Using French Revolutionary units doesn’t really matter in STEM, either: one can conduct science just as well in any units one wishes. One unit of measure is not more scientific than another. For example, degrees Kelvin and Rankine measure the same thing with different units. If anything, the Rankine degrees are more precise!

It's useful in STEM because SI units are often straightforwardly defined in terms of one another, it substantially reduces the amount of arbitrary constants you need in your equations, making them a lot easier to work with.

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

#527
post #379

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…

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

No, the ink does not dry. What happens is that the ball gets stuck if it is used too infrequently. This is solved by rubbing it against paper, or even better something rubbery. The underside of most people’s shoes works well for this. Just last week I used a Bic that was at least 30 years old. These things are very dependable.

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

#528
post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are intentionally making things difficult when you don't own a pen. That's very much your problem, and the rest of the world doesn't need to accommodate it.

When paper and pen was invented, I'm sure there was a bearded caveman holding a fish who made a comment about how it was someone's problem that they didn't have a tool to carve stone tablets. Paper is on its way out, electrons are the new medium.

Do you realise that this is the exact same positions as people who refuse to use a computer or a phone on principle? Ranting about having to use a pen is not being hip or modern, it’s being obnoxious.

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

#529
post #117

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).

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 :-).

Nah, I'm young and even to me the author's just on the extreme side of "digital native". The first thing I saw in the article was this and knew it was fake, too: "Considering the storage constraints back then" (he's just repeating it, he doesn't know if it's actually applicable). And now you know why random blogs, while insightful, shouldn't be treated as gold truth.

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

#530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 version wasn't specified in the request

They should have responded a code 300 Multiple Choices
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