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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)

#571

Post by pmkary »

davisr wrote: post #568
mapmeld wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At scale, there are a lot of confused people who do unexpected stuff. The maintainer of cURL has people contact him when a notice shows up in car software or when they think he is connected to hacking: https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2018/02/16/why-is-your-email-in-... https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2021/02/19/i-will-slaughter-you/

At FSF, someone would call every month thinking they had been "hacked" and that FSF was responsible because they found "evidence left behind" (the GPL).

This is gold :) I wished you share more of this stories

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

#572

Post by tialaramex »

db48x wrote: post #567
tialaramex wrote: post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But if you really think it’s important, then you can consider a series of sizes like tabloid, letter, and memo to be equivalent to A3, A4, and A5. This seems like you entirely missed the thread? The whole point is that this actually works for the A-series and in your made up US series it can't work because the ratio is wrong.

These are not made up sizes. They are standard paper sizes available in any store. Most ordinary househole printers won’t actually print on tabloid, and some won’t print on memo, but all copiers (and multifunction scanner/printers) can copy two letter pages and print them side by side, scaled down to memo size, on a single sheet letter of paper. It’s just a button you press, or maybe a checkbox you check, or whatever…

The sizes aren't what I said you'd made up. The series is, because of course this doesn't work properly with your scheme:

Let's try, start with 216 x 279 Letter and we'll scale that so we can fit two on the 279 long side, so they're just under 140mm wide now, memo size, but um, when we do that the scaled down pages are only 180mm high, even though they've got 216mm - there's a huge amount of empty white space wasted (at the top, or the bottom, or both) and that's because this ratio does not work.

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

#573

Post by rmwaite »

fph wrote: post #563
ngharo wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I met a web developer working for the FSF at a Boston pub one night while in town for a Red Hat conference. After many drinks, he walked us down fifth street to the FSF office building. I wasn’t sure what to expect but when we got there, he typed in some numbers on the door entry system, and what came out was RMS singing the free software song lol. It was a wonderful treat for a young Linux nerd on a hazy adventure i…

I love that your story could be read in two different ways: (1) a recording of RMS appeared on the door entry system screen, or (2) the man himself waltzed out of that door and started singing.

I must shamefully admit that I did indeed read this and think RMS himself came out singing.

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

#574

Post by fph »

rmwaite wrote: post #573
fph wrote: post #563

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love that your story could be read in two different ways: (1) a recording of RMS appeared on the door entry system screen, or (2) the man himself waltzed out of that door and started singing.

I must shamefully admit that I did indeed read this and think RMS himself came out singing.

RMS does indeed give out some strong Tom Bombadil vibes.

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

#575

Post by db48x »

tialaramex wrote: post #572
db48x wrote: post #567

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are not made up sizes. They are standard paper sizes available in any store. Most ordinary househole printers won’t actually print on tabloid, and some won’t print on memo, but all copiers (and multifunction scanner/printers) can copy two letter pages and print them side by side, scaled down to memo size, on a single sheet letter of paper. It’s just a button you press, or maybe a checkbox you check, or whatever…

The sizes aren't what I said you'd made up. The series is, because of course this doesn't work properly with your scheme: Let's try, start with 216 x 279 Letter and we'll scale that so we can fit two on the 279 long side, so they're just under 140mm wide now, memo size, but um, when we do that the scaled down pages are only 180mm high, even though they've got 216mm - there's a huge amount of empty white space wasted…

But nobody cares, they do it anyway. Or they did when making paper copies was more common. In practice we just read a PDF on a screen.

Plus the copiers are a bit more clever than you give them credit for. Instead of scaling the whole page down they put a bounding box around the actual content on the pages, to exclude the margins, and then scale that down to fit. The size of the margins changes slightly but not enough that anybody cares. This is especially true when you’re copying a bound book because there’s a really big margin in the middle to accommodate the binding. You don’t need that any more once you’ve printed the pages on a single sheet of paper.

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

#576

Post by homarp »

fragmede wrote: post #491
pabs3 wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hopefully it will never disappear, since Software Heritage and ArchiveTeam will have saved it. https://www.softwareheritage.org/ https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/Codearchiver

Hope is not a strategy. As much as I hate crypto, something on the blockchain might be more durable. You want something that isn't reliant on any one person or company to continue to exist (though maybe the long now foundation will) and even if Bitcoin goes to zero, I think there will be some die hard true believers to keep running miners even past the built in 2140 expiration date.

you also have die hard true beliviers data hoarder/archivist

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

#577

Post by acobster »

dheera wrote: post #442
Symbiote wrote: post #435

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.

When paper was invented, it was expensive to make, and very few people had access to it. It was basically confined to a small priesthood and most people were illiterate. Paper remained quite expensive for centuries.

So it would've been pretty rich for someone to say, "talking to these illiterate peasants to their faces is on its way out. Don't they know that writing is the new medium?"

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

#578

Post by HideousKojima »

int_19h wrote: post #498
HideousKojima wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Every single country in the world that is on metric today had to switch from something else at some point in the past. Why overfocus so much on UK when you have literally a hundred successful examples? A huge percentage of those countries didn't have established industrial bases, infrastructure, etc. And also no educated general populace that needed reeducating. And often those countries were effectively forced into…

Even then, that still leaves most of Europe.

Most of whom made the switch in the 1800s, prior to widespread industrialization

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

#579

Post by immibis »

adastra22 wrote: post #543
immibis wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This relies on a court's interpretation. GPLv3 made it explicit that the user has to be provided with everything they need to install modified software. GPLv2 just says "scripts used to control installation" which can be easily interpreted to exclude private signing keys. And the LGPLv2 says when an executable statically links to the library the user must be able to produce a modified executable - nothing at all abou…

That is an overly obtuse interpretation. Real law doesn’t work that way. Get in front of a court and the bench judge will shut down that kind of analysis real fast. The intended interpretation is quite clear in context.

Can you cite when it was interpreted this way please?

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

#580

Post by razakel »

layer8 wrote: post #348
01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For April fools I should set up an API for sending postal mail as a service

I’m pretty sure that’s a common business use case.

Yeah, there's several companies that do it.
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