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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)

#61

Post by 0xTJ »

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).

Sending mail being a challenging or difficult thing does come across as odd to me, being in Canada and born in the late 90s. Sure I haven't mailed a letter in a couple years, but when I do the main hassle is just finding where I put my stamps. I can however understand that finding return postage would be a hassle; I'm not sure why the UK and Canada (amongst others) don't do IRCs anymore.

It's also much easier these days to find out how to correctly format an address for a given destination. (At least for alphabet-based languages; I recently tried to decipher a Korean address in a business park and got nowhere fast.)

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

#62

Post by Symbiote »

rafaelm wrote: post #17
diggan wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I guess younger people and particularly those in tech may genuinely never need a reason I don't think it's just a age/generation thing though. I'm one year older than my wife, but I grew up in Sweden in the 90s, she grew up in Peru. Somehow, sending/receiving letters was something I've done multiple times growing up, but she never did, and wasn't until we were living together in Spain in the 2010s that she for…

Probably because in our countries (I'm also from S.America) the reliability of the post office is questionable at best, so it wasn't something I ever really used.

In most/all of Europe, letter volumes are reducing but they're still used. Even where email is common, letters are usually possible.

In your country,

- how do you get a new bank card, when the current one expires?

- how are you informed about a change like a price increase for electricity?

- how do you pay for electricity? (Knowing how much to pay, when etc) What about an elderly person?

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

#63

Post by graemep »

HideousKojima wrote: post #37
int_19h wrote: post #25

Earlier 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…

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 science has been entirely metric since the 80s.

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

#64

Post by jrmg »

int_19h wrote: post #34
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...

I can't even remember the last time I've used a pen for anything other than writing a check.

You don’t even write down temporary notes? Or doodle geometry when coding UI?

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

#65

Post by owl57 »

dsr_ wrote: post #13
diggan wrote: post #4

> 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…

Nearly everything in the US uses letter, legal (letter but longer), or tabloid (double width letter, to be folded over). Much to my surprise, a random check of a US-based office supply company shows that they do have A4 in stock -- at a price about 40% higher than letter-sized.

> legal (letter but longer)

This one surprised me quite a bit. I think most people have A4/letter-sized folders. Why does anyone think that papers slightly longer than those folders are a good idea?

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

#66

Post by ElevenLathe »

echoangle wrote: post #59
School-Cotton wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> seems confusing if so It is no more confusing to Americans than the fact that Europeans use A4 is to Europeans. Why should it be? Just like you didn’t know standards other than A4 exist, Americans don’t think about the fact that standards other than 8.5x11 inches (I.e. letter) exist. All printers, binders, folders, hole punchers, etc. are made with letter size paper in mind, and most people unless they are involved…

A4 isn’t some random format, you can derive it with three pieces of information: A0 is 1 square meter An to An+1 means cutting the paper along the middle of the longer edge Each An has the same aspect ratio Those are pretty useful properties and precisely define the dimensions of A4.

Why is this useful if you want to write a letter?

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

#67

Post by loloquwowndueo »

remram wrote: post #19
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).

The paper size and foreign stamps make sense, but I must say the inability to use a pen surprised me a little more.

Being unaware of paper sizes is baffling to me - where I live, letter and legal paper are common but I’m entirely aware of ISO216 paper sizes.

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

#68

Post by School-Cotton »

echoangle wrote: post #59
School-Cotton wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> seems confusing if so It is no more confusing to Americans than the fact that Europeans use A4 is to Europeans. Why should it be? Just like you didn’t know standards other than A4 exist, Americans don’t think about the fact that standards other than 8.5x11 inches (I.e. letter) exist. All printers, binders, folders, hole punchers, etc. are made with letter size paper in mind, and most people unless they are involved…

A4 isn’t some random format, you can derive it with three pieces of information: A0 is 1 square meter An to An+1 means cutting the paper along the middle of the longer edge Each An has the same aspect ratio Those are pretty useful properties and precisely define the dimensions of A4.

True, but I don’t understand why this would make letter size confusing to Americans. European office workers are not sitting around marveling at the mathematical elegance of the definition of A series paper. It just doesn’t matter in daily life.

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

#69

Post by coldpie »

maxloh wrote: post #42

Perhaps 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 f…

> Perhaps the FSF got confused about which license the author was referring to

When no version is specified in the request, returning the latest version seems like a reasonable thing to do.

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

#70

Post by rafram »

jillyboel wrote: post #60
School-Cotton wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, letter is used throughout North America and in parts of South America.

[flagged]

It really isn’t such a big deal. Switching to A4 would mean replacing every single binder, folio, cover, and clip in the country, and for what? A slightly taller sheet of paper? US printers can already print A4 if necessary without any issue.
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