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

https://code.mendhak.com/gpl-v2-address-letter/

by ekiauhce • 1 year ago

796 555 1 year ago

code.mendhak.com

froh• 1 year ago

(2022)

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).

diggan8• 1 year ago

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 the first time in her life sent a letter via the street mailboxes. She's not in tech either, if that matters, while I am.

rafaelm• 1 year ago

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.

remram3• 1 year ago

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

int_19h18• 1 year ago

I'm not an American and I did write letters in my country of origin as a kid, but one thing that annoys me about US-style envelopes to this day is that they have no lines for address - you're just expected to line text up on your own correctly. If you're used to writing on lined paper because that's the standard in your country (including envelopes!), it can be frustrating.

The envelopes I'm used to look like this: https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9A%D0%BE%D0%BD%D0%B2%D0%B5...

loloquwowndueo8• 1 year ago

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.

01HNNWZ0MV43FF4• 1 year ago

Yeah that's crazy. I use pens to doodle designs or write little recipes or Kanban cards or index cards for what's inside a box... The author maybe does all that by typewriter?

Gnuke2• 1 year ago

I wrote a letter to a friend last year. It was the first time in probably well over a decade I had used a pen for more than just scribbled notes or doodling. I made a ton of mistakes and I wasted at least a dozen sheets of paper rewriting it. Seems it's one of those skills that deteriorates without frequent practice, at least for me.

3np• 1 year ago

Sending physical mail is one thing. I no longer consider myself "digital native" after reading this:

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, printing the address would have taken less time

alabastervlog3• 1 year ago

I grew up pre-smartphone (pre-Web, partially, even) and even through college probably half my total output for school was hand written (friggin' blue book exams, LOL)

Some time last year, when trying to write something by hand and finding it alien and awkward, it occurred to me that for probably something like 15 years, and maybe more, I've perhaps not written more than a hundred words (signatures aside) by hand per year.

I have kids, so nearly all those words are on the stupid forms they constantly make you re-fill-out from scratch for no apparent reason at doctor's offices. If not for that, it'd be even lower. Some years I bet I was under 50. I go months without writing more than two or three words, total.

slightwinder3• 1 year ago

Even digital natives are using pens with their smartphones and tablets these days. It's just a choice now whether you use them. Though, not sure whether kids these days are still learning it in school.

0xTJ• 1 year ago

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.)

palata3• 1 year ago

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 :-).

alias_neo• 1 year ago

but ordering stamps... on eBay

OP was ordering US stamps to include _in_ the letter, on an SAE (self-addressed envelope) they were sending _from_ the UK, so that the FSF could reply (from the US) using said stamps.

As a millennial myself, I have no idea where else I'd look for <recipient country> stamps should I want to include them on a SAE I was sending to said country, so that they recipient wouldn't incur the cost of replying to me.

I don't find looking on eBay particularly strange, though I'd do a quick search for alternatives first.

cameronh904• 1 year ago

The author in the UK so it's pretty much a given that they're exaggerating for comedic effect, but... living in the UK myself, I have only sent maybe about 5 letters in my life, all to the government bureaucracy, and none more recently than a decade ago. And I'm a millennial, albeit on the younger side (so I tell myself).

I don't have any pens, paper or a printer in my house, so I'd probably go to my workplace if I needed to send a letter nowadays. I do occasionally send a parcel though, which involves printing off a shipping label, so the process isn't completely alien.

grishka2• 1 year ago

I'm also a millennial software engineer but I usually write stuff down to text files. I do use pen and paper to draw things if that helps my understanding of them. Like when there's geometry involved.

Sending letters isn't an alien concept to me either. I'm old enough to have done it regularly as a kid. I especially liked the part where you have to write the zip code in those machine-readable digits.

eru2• 1 year ago

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.

qingcharles• 1 year ago

I actually buy all my stamps on eBay. You can buy legit Forever USA stamps at below market rates.

spoonsort• 1 year ago

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.

bradley13• 1 year ago

Honestly, sending letters is increasingly alien: I rarely send one letter per year. This year I have sent two, only because I am trying to contact an incredibly old-fashioned directorate of the German government that doesn't seem to have an email address.

The stamps I have, I bought years ago - by now, they don't cover current letter prices. I wind up putting too much postage on the letters, because I'm not going to go buy even more stamps that I probably won't need...

liampulles• 1 year ago

Sending international postage in my country (South Africa) is not a very reliable process, so couriers and email are used quite heavily here instead. Its not necessarily an age thing.

drivingmenuts• 1 year ago

I have a roll of Forever stamps, purchased years ago. I don't even remember why, specifically, I purchased them. In theory, I could post a letter on my deathbed (I'm Generation X, so it's not that far off) and be assured that the delivery fee is covered by the cost of one stamp. Unfortunately, most of the people I would wish to correspond with will also be deceased at that time. So …

I leave it to y'all to monkey-knife-fight for the rest of the roll.

rwmj• 1 year ago

Disappointed that International Reply Coupons are no longer a thing too! I used one back in the 1980s to write to the authors of the Power C compiler[1] in the US about a bug (yes, a bug report by mail). I enclosed an IRC in case they wanted to reply. They were kind enough to write back, and didn't use the IRC (but sent it back). They did however include a floppy disk with the fixed compiler, which was nice of them.

[1] Still around: http://mixsoftware.com/product/powerc.htm

relistan3• 1 year ago

I still use them for ham radio QSL cards. They work everywhere that is a member of the Universal Postal Union (nearly all are). You can buy them online from Swiss Post. They will mail them for free.

https://shop.post.ch/en/packing-sending/sending-letters/regi...

ethbr13• 1 year ago

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 thing can, with as few third party requirements as possible.

In the sense that the FSF wants to be the exact opposite of {install this vendor's parking app to pay for parking} + {get an email account with this particular provider to ensure your email goes through} + {install TicketMaster for access to venue} + {this site requires IE^H^HChrome} all the other mandatory third-party choices we're forced into.

Postal mail, for all its faults, is universally accessible by design. And continuing to support the most accessible method of communication is laudable!

Accessibility and convenience >> convenience

Misdicorl2• 1 year ago

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.

ta8903• 1 year ago

It's like the classic argument about IRC vs Discord. IRC is more convoluted to use, the clients are subpar, you need to set up a BNC to receive messages when offline, but Discord requires you to give up your phone number.

Some people find IRC less accessible, but I find having a phone number that I'm willing to give to a third party is a much more difficult requirement.

dheera7• 1 year ago

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, etc. Typical USPS experience

samspot2• 1 year ago

A common mistake in accessibility is to assume accessibility is mostly for users who are blind. I've rarely seen the opposite approach, calling something accessible that is very much not accessible to a person who is blind. A url is much more accessible for many people with disabilities than the postal mail.

Even if you mean access instead of accessibility, presumably a person who can find a way to acquire stamps can just as easily make it to a library with public computers.

xmprt2• 1 year ago

Postal mail, for all its faults, is universally accessible by design

I think it's important to note that this isn't actually true. For a lot of homeless people or people who move often postal mail isn't as good. Online communication is actually more universal. Most (all?) public libraries have computers now.

bigstrat20033• 1 year ago

Physical mail isn't difficult, even now, for anyone with a modicum of competence. I can understand if someone hasn't used physical mail before, but it's very easy to look up how to send a letter + buy envelopes and stamps. If someone cannot do that without difficulty, they really need to work on their basic life skills.

ryandrake• 1 year ago

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 of time perfecting on Slashdot. 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. It was very earnestly written though, bravo!

petesergeant2• 1 year ago

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.

Some adults were born in 2007

bongodongobob4• 1 year ago

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.

dheera7• 1 year ago

Once I had to send an international RMA that they wouldn't pay for the shipping. It went something like this:

0. Went to Fedex to check on the shipping cost for this tiny box. It was $120 so I passed

1. Went to USPS, found that they were closed, the only option was a 30 minute line to use the machine. Lined up for 30 minutes, found that it the goddamn UI on the machine did not support international shipments.

2. Went home to generate a USPS international shipping label. $25, much more acceptable. FedEx should be out of business.

3. I didn't have a 2D printer at home, tried to 3D print the shipping label with 1 layer of white and 1 layer of black but it wasn't high resolution enough in the X/Y direction for the label to be readable so I gave up

4. Went to FedEx to use their 2D printers but realized I forgot my USB drive at home

5. Went home to get my USB drive

6. Back to FedEx, realized I forgot my mask (this was COVID times, so no go)

7. Went home to get my mask

8. Back to FedEx, printed the 2D shipping label

9. Back to USPS, found out they had no tape

10. Back to FedEx to buy a roll of tape because I don't know where the hell else to buy tape same day, and all my tape at home are electrical tape, teflon tape, or Gorilla tape

11. Back to USPS and the stupid package drop box had a mechanical issue preventing it from opening more than a few cm, not enough to fit my package

12. Went to another USPS to drop the package

SpaceNoodled10• 1 year ago

I think the strangest part is that it had been years since they had used a pen.

immibis7• 1 year ago

Keeping a pad of paper at your computer is one of those underrated things. You'd think the computer can record information just like the paper, and it can, but psychology is weird.

kccqzy• 1 year ago

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.

Scoundreller4• 1 year ago

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, printing the address would have taken less time.

Sometimes I cut out my address from a bill and tape that on as my return address. I know it’s formatted right.

I’d definitely do the same on a “self”-addressed stamped envelope that I need returned.

globular-toast4• 1 year ago

As far as I know there are still some things you have to post in the UK, like sending your cut up old driver's licence to the DVLA and maybe you still have to post your V5 when you sell a car. OP might not own a car or drive, though, so who knows?

desas• 1 year ago

V5Cs have been online for 3-4 years now.

You still have to send back your cut up old driver's license, though I have my doubts that someone is sat there checking and cross referencing each one they receive.

wink• 1 year ago

I mean, yes it reads a little awkward, but not too long ago I had misplaced the stack of envelopes + stamps I keep in my desk drawer and I needed to send something by snail mail (hey, remember that term?) and yeah. I am not someone who takes notes on paper, so I'm holding a pen only about once a week (the years quoted in the article sounds weird even to me) and it was a bit of a task (the whole sending, this time, not the writing). Bonus points for trying to use up old stamps when they're constantly changing the needed amount every couple years - so I usually need to put about 3 stamps even for local postage. But I guess that's just because I'm cheap and don't want to buy "new" code stamps when I have about 20 EUR in old stamps I can still use up.

Always interesting discussions with my wife who works in an office where paper mail, fax machines, and signing things on paper all happen multiple times every single day.

lproven4• 1 year ago

it is interesting to me how alien the act of sending a letter by post is to the author.

Indeed.

The author also seems unaware that a 1991 document could not contain a Web address because the world wide web did not exist yet. They guess it is because it is not widely available. That astonished me.

elzbardico2• 1 year ago

Man. I am generation-X, from a time when teachers would take the kids to a local post office and teach them how to send a letter and a telegram. And yet, while I have a vague idea of how could I send a letter nowadays, I would have absolutely no idea of how to send postage for the international return.

diggan8• 1 year ago

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 surprised that the US and some other countries decided to do things differently... As a European, I don't think I've ever seen something not A4 or A3/A4 in a professional context in my life, ever. Are US letter sizes what people use instead of A4 in a workplace for documents and such (seems confusing if so), and do printers sold in the US default to US letter sizes when printing? Or just happens to be something FSF only seem to be doing?

robin_reala• 1 year ago

It’s US standard. Hence the infamous default PC LOAD LETTER message on HP printers that made zero sense to anyone outside the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_LOAD_LETTER

bombcar5• 1 year ago

PC isn't Personal Computer, it's Paper Cartridge.

That's the missing link for Americans.

crazygringo• 1 year ago

That's implying it made sense to people in the US...

bayindirh• 1 year ago

do printers sold in the US default to US letter sizes when printing? Or just happens to be something FSF only seem to be doing?

Yes, the default printing paper for US is US Letter. I prefer to use my computers with US English language, and macOS defaults to US Letter as print and page size when you use US English as the default language.

Moreover, I had a ream of US Letter paper in the past, given me by our neighbor (I live in a A4 country, so it's that "odd" size).

jodaco• 1 year ago

It’s a US thing and most printers in the US default to it. You would be hard pressed to find someone who knows what A4 is.

Letter size is 8-1/2 x 11 inches by US standards.

bombcar5• 1 year ago

I've found that many Americans know what A4 is - that "weird European size that doesn't print right".

remram3• 1 year ago

Yes all paper is usually letter. It's close to A4, so you don't usually need to reformat documents to print on one or the other. Most printers take A4 and US letter and adapt automatically.

A4 is readily available in the US but not commonly used.

The main problem is that if you cut it in half, you get a really silly sizes (too narrow) instead of A5.

sgarland3• 1 year ago

Most printers take A4 and US letter and adapt automatically

I found out that they do not automatically adapt to JIS sizes. My wife’s work once had a printer that somehow got configured to use JIS, I assume JB5. It then refused to print on US Letter, but as printers are wont to do, didn’t produce any useful error message, nor relay this information to the computer. It just wouldn’t print. I only discovered this (because if you work in tech, you must know how to fix printers, right?) by laboriously scrolling through every menu on the tiny LCD screen, and finding that the paper settings were incorrect.

jccalhoun• 1 year ago

Yes, in the USA letter size is the standard. A3,4 don't exist. It isn't confusing because I would guess that more than half of all people in the USA don't even know that letter size isn't the standard everywhere. I was probably in my late 20s before I found out that Europe doesn't use the same size paper as we in the USA do. I can remember exactly once that I encountered it in the wild (I was at a conference and someone from Europe had some handouts).

bombcar5• 1 year ago

The European sizes exist in the USA if you want them, you just have to order them from a print shop or supplier.

Or you can get whatever you want - I wanted B4 paper to print a booklet (or B3 maybe) and I just bought a ream that was larger and had a print shop slice it down to B4. My US laser printer was fine printing onto B4.

sgarland3• 1 year ago

Oh no, it’s worse.

8.5 x 11” is US Letter, or 215.9 x 279.4 mm. We also have US Legal, which as the name implies, is frequently used by legal professions. I have no idea why. It is 8.5 x 14”, or 215.9 x 355.6 mm. Finally, we have US Tabloid (I guess used for small newspapers?), which is 11 x 17”, or 279.4 x 431.8 mm.

And yes, our printers default to US Letter. The line from the movie Office Space: “PC Load Letter? WTF does that mean?” is the printer’s cryptic way of saying “Load Letter-sized paper into the Paper Cassette.”

EDIT: there are are apparently more US-specific sizes I was unaware of, which you can view and compare with others on this site: https://papersizes.io/us/

dsr_• 1 year ago

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.

kstrauser• 1 year ago

And by “nearly everything”, I've never personally seen or used printer or copier paper that wasn't letter or legal. I know it exists, but I've never, not once, bought or used it.

kevin_thibedeau• 1 year ago

I used to work at Kodak and they had an industrial printer division in my building. They would go through pallet-fulls of A4 for their testing. Only place Ive seen it in use in a business setting in the US.

owl572• 1 year ago

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?

codazoda• 1 year ago

Don't forget my favorite size, "statement". This is half of letter size. Sometimes used for small statements, sometimes used as letter folded.

Hacker News users may be familiar with Julia Evans (http://jvns.ca) who creates technology zines that work in both A4 and Letter sizes, folded in half.

Aardwolf• 1 year ago

legal (letter but longer)

Why are two slightly different standards needed? Does legal really need to print "just a little bit more" text than others? If so, why not just use that one for everything?

rietta2• 1 year ago

It's the standard here in the USA. The other standard is the US Legal at 8.5 inches by 14 inches (216 mm by 356 mm). This is what is used in court settings (hence the name) but also things like paper mortgage statements will typically come printed on that. That is much similar to your A4 size.

I am familiar with A4, A5 and such. But I think that fewer and fewer people are. It's just not something used every day.

As a side note, most of the big important house bills and statements I still insist on receiving via US mail for protection reasons. There is a risk if I only had them emailed to me that my wife would not have access. If I were to suddenly die, I don't want my wife with our kids to miss a critical bill. By having them show up at the house in physical form provides a bit of defense in depth here.

gnfargbl• 1 year ago

There's a map of ANSI vs ISO paper size usage around the world which crops up on Reddit occasionally: https://reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/19dswr4

I can guess why the Philippines uses ANSI sizes. But Chile?

sanderjd2• 1 year ago

How is this "confusing"? I don't think I've ever thought about paper size a single time in my life.

int_19h18• 1 year ago

I think GP is referring to the name - "letter" implies that it's the standard paper size used for writing letters specifically, as opposed to printed documents (of course, in US it's really both).

int_19h18• 1 year ago

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 ounces vs fluid ounces.

umanwizard5• 1 year ago

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)

HideousKojima4• 1 year ago

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 is based on the pound).

umanwizard5• 1 year ago

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 in business with other countries have never encountered an A4 sheet of paper in their lives and probably have no idea other standards exist.

diggan8• 1 year ago

It is no more confusing to Americans than the fact that Europeans use A4 is to Europeans. Why should it be?

Well, A4 (and variants) are not Europe-specific formats, it's the formats most of the world except some few countries (including the US) use, so I'd say it's slightly more surprising than the other way around.

echoangle3• 1 year ago

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.

dizhn• 1 year ago

It's a pretty good paper size standard. Fold A4 in half and you get A5. Put two A4s side by side and that's an A3 size.

tallanvor• 1 year ago

Look, there's plenty of things to complain about with regards to the US - especially these days. But getting upset about US citizens not using all the same standards in their daily lives as many other places is just silly. --It's like complaining about the UK and a relatively small number of countries that chose to drive on the left instead of the right. Could they change? Sure. Are they likely to change? Seems pretty unlikely.

diggan8• 1 year ago

But getting upset about US citizens not using all the same standards in their daily lives as many other places is just silly

Good thing it wasn't a complaint then, just questions from someone who doesn't know how it works across the pond :) And it seems to be the story of someone outside of North America trying to interact with the North American standards, not some internal confusion between internal states or whatnot.

therealpygon2• 1 year ago

Are US letter sizes what people use instead of A4 in a workplace for documents and such (seems confusing if so)

Yes, it is just our standard like A4 is yours. When you pull a paper out of the pack it is A4 when we pull it out it is ANSI A, commonly known a US Letter size. Instead of 8.27”x11.69”, we use 8.5”x11”. We also commonly use US Legal size, which is 8.5”x14”. Slightly longer and can fit in the same envelope.

do printers sold in the US default to US letter sizes when printing?

Yes. However all of our printers can do all sizes since our paper is slightly larger, while an A4 specific printer couldn’t print a US letter.

rswail4• 1 year ago

Except pretty much all printer drivers these days can down convert from letter to A4.

Margins on left/right might be skinnier, but length wise US letter fits.

2mlWQbCK• 1 year ago

I don't think I ever had a A4 printer that could not also print Letter. It is almost certainly the exact same models that they also sell in the US, but with just some bit flipped in the firmware to change the default paper size.

My current printer, like most printers I believe, can be configured to print custom sizes. The maximum is something like 9 or 9.5 inches wide IIRC, and the length can be set much longer.

PaulRobinson• 1 year ago

I'm interested in hearing from someone at FSF (and I used to know someone, but I don't think he's there any more), who can tell us how often this has happened. I can't imagine it's a frequent occurrence.

philipwhiuk2• 1 year ago

Yeah I sort of hoped it would cover that bit not just the author's foibles at writing a letter.

bluGill6• 1 year ago

As I implied in my top level comment, it should happen more often than it likely does. If you work on a commercial project with any GPL code ask your test group who has done that and when - if you don't see a lot of hands go up then your test group isn't doing their job. (if you are only automated tests, then I assume you have an automated test to send this letter and verify the response)

01HNNWZ0MV43FF4• 1 year ago

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

stusmall• 1 year ago

I love how small of a world this site is: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43784538

gwd3• 1 year ago

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...

dharmab6• 1 year ago

I'm at the point where the only things I handwrite are gift labels and holiday cards. Maybe an occasional doctor's office form, but those are increasingly digital.

int_19h18• 1 year ago

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

cormorant3• 1 year ago

Well, there's my minimum of once per month :)

maccard2• 1 year ago

I've never written a check in my life.

lolinder• 1 year ago

I can't remember the last time I wrote a check, but I use pens pretty regularly.

jrmg• 1 year ago

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

01HNNWZ0MV43FF4• 1 year ago

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

gwd3• 1 year ago

I probably write a check every 5 years, and each time I need to ask someone how to do it, because the checks are slightly different compared to the country I grew up in.

daedrdev• 1 year ago

There will soon be many people who never learn how to write, only type

mort96• 1 year ago

And many, many more people who never learn how to write or type, only to tap a phone screen!

xaitv• 1 year ago

Think the last time I used a pen is about 8-9 years ago when I had to sign something to buy my home. Notes and stuff I just write on my phone or computer and I don't see what else I'd use a pen for.

massysett2• 1 year ago

Wow, I use a pen nearly every day. Sometimes I deliberately get a pen or pencil and paper rather than a phone. I was doing some home improvements in my attic, and I would often need to jot down a measurement so I could cut wood etc. I did this once or twice on my phone and realized it's much easier to do this with a pencil and small notepad.

In what is perhaps the most ironic blend of high and low tech, I wrote my own software to build grocery lists, which I then print and use a pen to cross items off as I shop. This is by far the most efficient vs trying to faff about with some mobile solution.

alabastervlog3• 1 year ago

I tried for a while to do the whole "notebook life" thing that was really trendy to blog about some years back, but found I never had the notebook I wanted on-hand (even if I was just using one notebook...) or forgot to grab a pen or can't find a pen et c. Then making it possible to find anything in them requires more effort afterward.

What do I have on me basically all the time? My phone.

I've done everything in Apple Notes for years now, and it's so much less hassle, and actually works for me. I just make sure to include words I might use to search for a note, when writing a new note. Search does the rest. I can and sometimes do organize things into directories, but usually it's kinda wasted effort. Search is enough.

Meanwhile, the few dozen pages scattered across four or five notebooks that I generated in that brief kick remain, passively, a pain in the ass. I've carted them through two moves, meaning to digitize them, because when I remember they exist and browse I'm like "oh yeah, that was a good idea!" but, out of sight out of mind and when I stumble across them I'm always in the middle of doing other, more important shit.

mcgrath_sh2• 1 year ago

Genuinely curious, I don't write anything long by hand, but do you not jot down disposable information with frequency, or date food, or anything like that? I date food we put in the fridge/freezer. I jot down something like a phone number if I am redirected. I have to give my pet medication occasionally and I use a post-it to track so the household can know. Like I said, I'm not writing anything even as long as a card, but I use a pen multiple times a week, and essentially daily. I know a lot of people use their phones for this stuff (and I do too), and maybe I'm an old person now for not using my phone for all of that.

dharmab6• 1 year ago

I use a text file in my phone for notes.

I don't have roommates, but if I did we'd probably use a whiteboard for tracking errands and schedules.

diggan8• 1 year ago

I date food we put in the fridge/freezer

What date are you putting on the food? Every packaging here in Spain (and Europe I assume) has both the production date and "best before" dates printed on them from the factory, and stuff that doesn't have packaging you know if they're bad by looking/smelling/tasting.

mytailorisrich2• 1 year ago

He's also obviously not used to write/type letters... The whole thing is quite awful.

Schools used to teach this a minimum but they no longer do. It was also standard to learn that for job hunting but, again, I don't think many people apply for jobs by post nowadays although it can still be useful to know how to write a formal cover letter.

dharmab6• 1 year ago

These days most candidates use AI generated cover letters.

sph• 1 year ago

My hand writing got rusty and awkward until I read that writing something by hand is shown to strengthen one's memory and recollection. It definitely seems to be the case for me and has made me much more organised.

Now I journal on a paper notebook, take daily notes on a whiteboard and I'm rediscovering index cards for long term storage, but I wish real life had a search function.

If I had an automated scanning + OCR + convert to Org system, I would never use a text editor for notes ever again.

pasc18784• 1 year ago

Try using a tablet with hand written notes. There are programs (or even applications that replace the popup keyboard ) that will convert your writing into computer text.

I think that gives the improved retention plus easy filing of the result and if your writing is like mine the ability to actually read what you wrote a year before.

brnt• 1 year ago

Wow wow wow, look at mr bestseller over here!

johannes12343212• 1 year ago

I recently was in an awkward situation when ordering my new passport. Most times I got to sign some papers I have some signature which is a few waves, not forming many letters. In the passport office the clerk told me they can't recognize any enough letters in there, so I had to do multiple attempts till they were happy ... now my passport got a signature I won't be able to replicate ever.

(I do some handwriting for notes taking, but that's some writing based on block letters, not script as in a signature)

Suppafly14• 1 year ago

now my passport got a signature I won't be able to replicate ever

I'm not sure I could ever prove I am who I say I am using my signature. My wife signs my name most of the time when it's necessary for a check or a health form for the kids or whatever. Whenever I go to vote, I try to sneak a look at their copy of the form to see how I signed it when I registered. I think my credit union has one 'on file' for me, but I'm sure it's nothing like how I actually sign my name and is from ~25 years ago.

int_19h18• 1 year ago

This is a very strange requirement, to be honest. E.g. what about foreigners whose native script is not the same, so their (pre-existing) signature is unparseable to that clerk anyway?

FWIW I have a signature that is barely recognizable as my two initials, and I have never had it rejected on such grounds in the five different countries (using two different scripts) I've had to sign documents using it.

Suppafly14• 1 year ago

but I'm sure I hand-write something at least once a month..

I'm sure I do too, but I couldn't actually tell you what I used it for. Probably to cross items off a shopping list or sign my name on something. Actually we got a new car and I needed to sign the form at the DMV to get license plates, so I guess that was it.

sudobash12• 1 year ago

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.

ryukoposting• 1 year ago

I'm not sure if I go one day without writing something.

For my blog, I can usually go straight to typing, but for my bigger projects I start by writing out any ideas, research, etc. I find that writing stuff helps me recall it later, even if I don't actually read the notes. It's especially helpful for big blobs of interconnected ideas.

WaitWaitWha2• 1 year ago

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 card (smallish, lined cards for taking notes) was indeed a postcard. Sadly, I often have to buy them at the airport on arrival.

munchler• 1 year ago

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.

NelsonMinar• 1 year ago

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

voidUpdate• 1 year ago

What places don't have postcards? Whenever I go to places in the UK, tourist tat shops will often have hundreds of them in every flavour of souvenir

alberto-m• 1 year ago

It seems to be a cultural thing. As an European I am used to find postcards in every town, but when I went to Singapore I had a hard time procuring them. None of the souvenir shops had them, and when I asked the employees they often looked at me as if I were some kind of strange animal. I finally found a small, dusty selection in the darkest corner of a huge department store.

philipwhiuk2• 1 year ago

I always like to buy a postcard.

Occasionally actually post them before I leave a place (ideally soon after I arrive).

Generally they arrive substantially after I get back.

01HNNWZ0MV43FF4• 1 year ago

I know how to send mail but it's like doing taxes, I'm afraid I'll get something wrong and not find out until I'm in trouble for it

I'm probably younger than you by quite a bit.. no descendents, no time to travel, not allowed in many countries or US states anyway

Suppafly14• 1 year ago

Asking as the acquisition of envelope, paper and stamps read like a new adventure for the author.

I can pretty much guarantee it'd be an adventure for my teen, nearly adult, children.

radnor• 1 year ago

Yes! Check out Postcrossing, where you can sign up to send and receive postcards to random people. :)

https://www.postcrossing.com/

cormorant3• 1 year ago

Different addresses are stated in different copies of the license. https://opensource.org/license/gpl-2-0 has: "59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA"

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.txt has no postal address.

https://spdx.org/licenses/GPL-2.0-only.html has "51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA" in red italics, and says: " Text in red is replaceable (see Matching Guidelines B.3.4). License or exception text will match to the text for the specified identifier if it includes a permitted variant of this replaceable text. The permitted variants can be found in the corresponding regular expression as shown in title text visible by hovering over the red text."

Which in turn says: "can be replaced with the pattern .{54,64}" (that is, any string between 54-64 characters long).

yapyap• 1 year ago

as I haven’t used a pen in several years

Lol this is a bit ridiculous but a fun blogpost!

pabs37• 1 year ago

The FSF has moved address at least once, and more recently, now closed their offices entirely. I wonder if the new owners of their old addresses will or did get confused by copy-of-GPL requests.

vinceguidry• 1 year ago

Postman probably just redirects, with a business or institution it's easy to just have the Post Office direct all mail addressed to "Free Software Foundation" to the current address.

bluGill6• 1 year ago

For a few months. The post office will do it for anyone for a few months, but then they stop forwarding mail. Maybe businesses get that treatment longer, but when people move they only get a few months.

pabs37• 1 year ago

They don't have a current address to redirect to, they went completely virtual.

mattl5• 1 year ago

I used to work at the FSF and one of my jobs was replying to these letters. They would be so infrequent by 2008 that I think I handled less than 10 in my time there. I sent way more copies of books to prisoners who requested them, gave more tours of the office, etc. I also did some other stuff when I worked there but if you were to look at the FSF website today you might think I’m still there as pages often have the name of the person who created the page listed as the author still.

The FSF has moved a few times.

* 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge.

* 59 Temple Place, Boston

* 51 Franklin St, Boston

* 31 Milk Street, Boston

The first address wasn’t around for too long, but does still exist. It’s an office building above a bank in Central Square, Cambridge right above the Red Line stop.

The second address was around for a long, long time. A few years ago, the building was demolished and turned into a hotel. I don’t know if 59 Temple Place is still a valid address or not. For this one, I found many of most frequent places and filed bugs to get it updated. Greg K-H helped me update the kernel and many of the issues I opened got resolved with other projects. Worth noting too that the FSF had two different offices in the same building but mail would go to the building. Mail did forward from here to the next address for a while, but I’m not sure if it’ll forward again to the latest address.

51 Franklin St is just around the corner from 59 Temple Place. When they moved here, many staff were able to walk their stuff over to the new office. This one finally closed last year. I worked here my entire time at the FSF.

The final one is a PO Box but also around the corner from 51 Franklin St.

Thoreandan• 1 year ago

I'd always wanted to see a physical copy of the $5,000.00 'Deluxe Distribution' -

https://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~trent/gnu/bull/16/gnu_bulletin_23....

The FSF Deluxe Distribution contains the binaries and sources to hundreds of different programs including GNU Emacs, the GNU C Compiler, the GNU Debugger, the complete MIT X Window System, and the GNU utilities.
You may choose one of these machines and operating systems: HP 9000 series 200, 300, 700, or 800 (4.3 BSD or HP-UX); RS/6000 (AIX); Sony NEWS 68k (4.3 BSD or NewsOS 4); Sun 3, 4, or SPARC (SunOS 4 or Solaris). If your machine or system is not listed, or if a specific program has not been ported to that machine, please call the FSF office at the phone number below or send e-mail to gnu@prep.ai.mit.edu.
The manuals included are one each of the Bison, Calc, Gawk, GNU C Compiler, GNU C Library, GNU Debugger, Flex, GNU Emacs Lisp Reference, Make, Texinfo, and Termcap manuals; six copies of the manual for GNU Emacs; and a packet of reference cards each for GNU Emacs, Calc, the GNU Debugger, Bison, and Flex.
In addition to the printed and on-line documentation, every Deluxe Distribution includes a CD-ROM (in ISO 9660 format with Rock Ridge extensions) that contains sources of our software.

I wonder how many (if any?) were sold, it'd be an excellent museum piece.

Sesse__2• 1 year ago

Debian also has a packaging lint rule telling people to update the FSF postal address. So much energy must be wasted in this. :-)

bluGill6• 1 year ago

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 address. Somehow the lawyers found out about this and the forced us to do a full recall, sending techs to each machine to install an update (the testers installed the original software and were expected to apply updates, but we still had to send someone to install this update and track that everyone got it). Lawyers want to show good faith in courts - they consider it inevitable that someone will violate the GPL and are hoping that by showing good faith attempts to follow the letter and spirit the court won't force releasing our code when a "rouge employee" manages to violate the license.

The more important take away is if your automated test process doesn't send letters to your GPL compliance address to verify it works then you need manual testers: not only are you not testing everything, but you didn't even think of everything so you need the assurance of humans looking for something "funny".

diggan8• 1 year ago

An updated version would say to make sure every email address you use/show in the application/terms/policies are usable and someone receives it.

When reviewing stuff that introduces new emails and whatnot I always spend 10-20 seconds sending an email with "Please respond if you see this" to verify it actually works and someone receives it, as I've experienced more than once that no one actually setup the email before deploying the changes that will show the email to users.

terinjokes5• 1 year ago

Why should the test process be sending physical letters (edit: in 2025)? Nothing in the GPLv2 requires a physical letter.

The address the OP sent a letter too has already been removed from the canonical version of the license (and was itself an unversioned change from the original address), and section 3 doesn't require a physical offer if the machine-readable source code is provided.

ndiddy3• 1 year ago

Some companies still do this mainly to make the GPL request process more annoying so fewer people do it. If you have to mail a letter with a check to cover shipping/handling and wait for the company to send you a CD-R with the code on it, fewer people will look at the code compared to if the company just put it on Github or something.

AlbinoDrought• 1 year ago

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

dunham• 1 year ago

That's recent enough that mail forwarding should work, if they set it up:

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).

Edit for source: https://www.usps.com/manage/forward.htm

mattl5• 1 year ago

I wrote a little more about the various offices as someone who used to work there.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43783632

brian-armstrong• 1 year ago

Did they also force RMS to move out?

twic• 1 year ago

This test isn't about writing to the FSF, it's about writing to the vendor who supplied the software.

chasd00• 1 year ago

reminds me of this old joke. Two testers walk into a bar, the first says "i'll have a beer please" and they get their beer as expected. The second says "I just want water" and they get the water just like the asked. Then a user walks into the bar and asks "where's the bathroom?". The bar explodes.

ahtihn• 1 year ago

court won't force releasing our code when a "rouge employee" manages to violate the license.

Is this an actual, real risk? Has a court ever forced anyone to release their code because they were violating the GPL?

My understanding is that this is not how this works. If you violate the license you simply don't have a valid one and basically committing copyright infringement. The punishment for that isn't being forced to comply with the license, it's having to pay damages to the copyright owner.

Showing good faith doesn't really change the end result: you're using code that you don't have a license to. The only fix is to start complying or stop selling your software until you remove the code you don't have a license to use.

bluGill6• 1 year ago

Not that I'm aware of. NEXT however did release objective-C source code, but AFAIK that never went to court (anyone able to find those details - I can't find them now).

The text of the GPL is release source code. There are a few people who want release source code to be the only way out of any infringement. If a company intentionally violates the GPL that starts to look like a reasonable argument to courts. However if a company takes "enough" effort to not infringe and does anyway a smaller penalty would apply.

If you don't have a license and distributed software, then that is a copyright violation and the author is entitled to damages. Exactly what those are is something the court figures out. However one important piece of evidence is the license was release your source code. Thus lawyers want that additional cover of we knew and decided not to use GPL code, and there are the steps we took to ensure we didn't: since we took effort you shouldn't apply that extreme penalty.

I do know that good faith in other areas has made a difference. Companies have been caught bribing foreign officials before - which is a shut down the company level event (many countries have laws that if you bribe a government anywhere, not just in their country). However because the company could show they made good faith efforts to ensure everyone knew not to bribe this was just the act of a rouge employee.

How real is it? Hard to say. Good lawyers will tell you that putting in some effort to ensure you don't infringe is cheap protection even if the risk is low.

terinjokes5• 1 year ago

A few countries I'll be visiting this summer still sell International Reply Coupons. It might be interesting to pick some up and see how difficult it is to exchange them. Would a PostNL point even know what to do with one?

relistan3• 1 year ago

As a ham radio operator who still likes paper QSL cards, I’ve bought international reply coupons from Swiss Post because they still sell them and you can order them online (I live in Ireland but here they no longer sell them). Any postal service that is a member of the Universal Postal Union (nearly all of them are AFAICT) is obliged to accept them. They work in most places.

terinjokes5• 1 year ago

Hey, I'm KG8ORS. It's been aong time since I've sent a QSL card (and I've never received one), but it's where I first heard about IRCs.

I agree that UPU members are required to accept them. PostNL closed all of their post offices a few years ago in favor of contracting out to businesses, who may not be familiar with them.

It looks like Omniva (aka/fka Eesti Post) also ships worldwide and charges in Euro.

maxloh2• 1 year ago

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 fork the Kernel and relicense the fork in a way that prevented him from merging their improvements upstream. He referred to the FSF's move as "dishonest", "sneaky" and "immoral" and decided he would "never have anything to do with the FSF again".

https://youtu.be/PaKIZ7gJlRU

coldpie7• 1 year ago

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.

maxloh2• 1 year ago

IMO, the correct response would be "Hey we have version 1, 2, and 3 of this license, all of them have been attached. Please make sure which one you were talking about".

roywashere• 1 year ago

That reminds me on the time the FSF moved, they changed their address, and the open source product I worked on had to change their address in the license notices in our product:

https://github.com/moritz/otrs/commit/e845575e1848fd0124fb8d...

And of course, as happens more often, this issue was raised to us by Debian developers, who care a great deal about 'correctness'

craniumslows• 1 year ago

The FSF offices have moved again if you weren't aware. The new address is

Free Software Foundation 31 Milk Street, # 960789 Boston, MA 02196 USA

https://www.fsf.org/about/contact/mailing

collinfunk• 1 year ago

In Gnulib we distribute and use the license with just a link to <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/> [1]. I would just use that.

Many GNU projects use a rule that will fail 'make distcheck' when it sees an address in the sources [2].

[1] https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/gnulib.git/commit/?id=bf31... [2] https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/gnulib.git/commit/?id=086c...

sinuhe69• 1 year ago

It would be a perfect story for the "Dull Men Center" or alike :D

martopix• 1 year ago

Writing the address on the envelope was awkward, as I haven’t used a pen in several years;

Really??

VikingCoder3• 1 year ago

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 there's an accusation of sexual abuse against children that it will go to a mediator who has final say, and if they say it was a credible accusation, that Mark immediately loses his job, and can never work anywhere that uses this same contract, ever again. Sorry, you lost your chance to work with kids. It sucks that it might have been a false accusation, but our kids are just far too important to trust to the existing systems.

Guess what? Churches should follow a similar license. Letting priests or pastors move from town to town, abusing kids? That was completely bonkers insane. And I feel like a contract like this (and a registry, and etc.) could have helped. If people forced their daycares and churches to accept a license like this.

Another one, "Hi, Greg. We understand we'd like your endorsement from our political party? Sounds good, here's a contract for you..."

It says, among other things, that if Greg switches political parties that he must resign from office. Sorry. He's welcome to run again, but he can't stay in office on our votes.

Like, shouldn't we have more contracts like this?

yjftsjthsd-h• 1 year ago

If I follow correctly, then yes I agree that having more widely used standard licenses/contracts would be nice. One of my crazy legal fantasies is that all EULAs have to go through a central government authority that pushes back on new ones, because one of the things I love about FOSS is that there's only a handful of common licenses, so you can reasonably read them once and then just see them and know what you're getting. I don't need to re-read the GPL every time I use a new piece of software using it, because I already know what it says.

To a specific point, though,

Guess what? Churches should follow a similar license. Letting priests or pastors move from town to town, abusing kids? That was completely bonkers insane. And I feel like a contract like this (and a registry, and etc.) could have helped. If people forced their daycares and churches to accept a license like this.

Er, yes, that does sound bonkers; where are you that every school, church, and daycare isn't already doing a background check on every single person working there?

VikingCoder3• 1 year ago

Er, yes, that does sound bonkers; where are you that every school, church, and daycare isn't already doing a background check on every single person working there?

Someone has to be convicted for something to show up on their background check, yes?

equinoxnemesis• 1 year ago

I could imagine a judge holding a contract to resign from office void as contrary to public policy (on the basis of the intuition that elected representatives shouldn't have their continuance in office subject to random contracts with third parties lest this interfere with their service to the public.)

inetknght• 1 year ago

Like, shouldn't we have more contracts like this?

So... like a social scorecard that's easily manipulated?

No.

gus_massa• 1 year ago

and if they say it was a credible accusation, [...], but our kids are just far too important to trust to the existing systems.

You mean dropping some hard earned human right like Presumption of Innocence?

You may think it doesn't apply to you, but the landlords and HOA can add a similar clause, because children must be safe at home too. And every software company may add the same clause because they (may) have a game division and children must be safe online too. And ...

Suddenly, any accusation that a non-professional fake-judge says is "credible" makes you an outcast of society.

skeltoac• 1 year ago

Contracts are negotiable. Don’t like the numbers in paragraph twelve? Can’t agree to forfeit one of the rights listed in appendix G? Redline it and see what they say.

EULA, TOS, and Docusign have mostly forced people to forget their right to negotiate contracts because all they let you do is agree to the terms offered. So it seems natural today that people just want standard contracts for everything.

Lazyweb: what’s that story about the guy who redlined his credit card contract and the bank accepted it?

Suppafly14• 1 year ago

Like, shouldn't we have more contracts like this?

We have tons of them, they are written by lawyers.

VikingCoder3• 1 year ago

I wish they were standardized and freely available.

throwaway173738• 1 year ago

A lot of your use cases are already met by professional certifications and licenses. For example to run or work at a daycare in my state you have to have a license and part of the licensure process is a background check. That’s a much better system already because there’s already a state agency in charge of managing and revoking the license and as edge cases arise they don’t require re-negotiation.

rietta2• 1 year ago

I am impressed that the FSF has kept up the same office / mailing address for 32 years at the time the article was written!

low_tech_punk• 1 year ago

Exploring implications of an absolute physical address. FSF basically claimed a physical "domain name" and no future organizations will be able to reside in that address. FSF can move out and ask USPS to do a 301 Moved Permanently or 308 Permanent Redirect.

jraph• 1 year ago

they actually did move in the meantime :-) [1]

Can this redirection be forever?

no future organizations will be able to reside in that address

You are supposed to put the name, no? "Some Organization, <old address>" would unambiguously refer to the new org.

[1] https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/fsf-office-closing-party

reaperducer• 1 year ago

ask USPS to do a 301 Moved Permanently or 308 Permanent Redirect.

The USPS doesn't honor either 301 or 308. As someone who moves just about every year, and fills out the paperwork to get my 301s and 308s for free, instead of paying a third-party service, I can tell you that the 301/308 at USPS is only good for one year.

To get around this, I used to use a 305: Use Proxy, but then my UPS Store of choice closed, and I was back to 301/308 land.

HeyLaughingBoy3• 1 year ago

At my first job, we'd occasionally have old people showing up to pay their water bill (with checks, of course!) because 20 years previously, the local water utility occupied the same building that we were in. They were generally pretty upset because we had no idea where the water company was and they were paying in person because the bill was late, and their water could potentially be shut off.

crmi4• 1 year ago

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?

Luc• 1 year ago

I don't think that's satire. A wry observation perhaps.

returningfory23• 1 year ago

I don't understand the satire, can you explain?

We can't see the full set of "lower denomination" stamps on the letter, but I'm not 100% sure it's actually lower denomination. The sender of the stamps seems to be using the "2 domestic forevers + some amount of cents = 1 global forever" formula. I think the UK sender didn't need to include _two_ global forevers.

returningfory23• 1 year ago

Indeed, the formula is correct. Wikipedia maintains a list of historic Forever pricing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_United_States_posta...

From the blog, the letter from California was dated April 2022, at which point the rates were domestic = $0.58 and global = $1.30. So the California sender correctly attached two domestics valued at $1.16 total plus an additional $0.14 to make $1.30.

sudobash12• 1 year ago

I think the UK sender didn't need to include _two_ global forevers.

It would be hard to know that ahead of time though. The global forever stamp is good for letters up to 1oz which can be as little as 4 US letter pages. It took the FSF 5 double-sided pages. Granted, it looks like lightweight paper & the post office doesn't seem to be very picky about this. But I think sending two forever stamps was being on the safe side.

crmi4• 1 year ago

I think quoting that part alone, didn't make it clear I was referring to the whole article.

...... "Oh Well."

May have been more apt.

Is eBay really anyones first thought when looking for a (non-collector) stamp to (actually) mail?

Perhaps he should have picked up a few £1 coins on eBay, use them to purchase some stamps from the post office?...

Scoundreller4• 1 year ago

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.

changadera• 1 year ago

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.

davisr3• 1 year ago

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.

MadnessASAP• 1 year ago

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?

jenscow• 1 year ago

The version wasn't specified in the request

self_awareness2• 1 year ago

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

cortesoft• 1 year ago

What sort of request volume did you get? How many per day were you sending out?

davisr3• 1 year ago

On average, zero per day, maybe 5 to 10 per year.

ngharo• 1 year ago

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 in the early morning

fph3• 1 year ago

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.

leoh• 1 year ago

Was including reply postage in fact required?

samspot2• 1 year ago

If you never pick up a pen to sign a birthday card, thank you note, or wedding album, that's a symptom you are too isolated!

supportengineer• 1 year ago

“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”

ray023• 1 year ago

Dude wastes the FSFs time, complains about wrong license without telling them the one he wanted. Then complains again that he needs to recover from the HORROR of using the postal service that was a deliberate, POINTLESS CHOICE. Gets fame on Hacker News for it.

YAY!

avodonosov• 1 year ago

I once was reading a software license, and deep inside it there was a promise: who has read till this place will get a certain prise. I emailed them, they kind of confirmed that I am eligible for the prise. But it was a far away city, so I never went to claim it.

johnea• 1 year ago

This was such a laugh!

I have to wonder if the whole exercise was a prime example of a brit "taking the piss" 8-)

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 literally laughed out loud at this 8-)

And the outrageous expectation of obtaining... stamps!

It was just too funny.

For unfamiliar muricans: The success, according to british cultural standards, in the humiliation of the intended victim is increased, when the victim replies while being completely unaware that they are actually being mocked.

renecito• 1 year ago

is the owner of the address a perpetual owner of the GPL? Example: - Step 1: Create evil Corporation - Step 2: Buy that address - Step 3: Create a new GPL, still GPL but technically a new version. This can make sure the sole owner of the claimed IP (remove the FSF of course). - Step 4: Sell your updated license to anyone that'd want to go around previous GPL.

AxEy• 1 year ago

Tangentially related: I've always wanted to write a hello the address that they show during the opening credits of MST3K. Has anyone tried?

pcbmaker20• 1 year ago

Why would you do this, the text is available online!

rs186• 1 year ago

Looks like no other comment dwells on the fact that FSF was based in Boston.

I heard that Boston was a small hub for tech companies back in the 90s (which is is much less true these days), which might explain this.

philwelch3• 1 year ago

FSF was founded by Richard Stallman, who was a Harvard student and worked at the MIT AI Lab.

stevage• 1 year ago

Writing the address on the envelope was awkward, as I haven’t used a pen in several years;

I wonder if this was just rhetorical flourish? Are there really people who never ever use a pen?

I barely ever handwrite anything but there are still crosswords and the occasional form to fill in.

srott• 1 year ago

the building seems to have 4 floors only

https://www.google.com/maps/place/51+Franklin+St,+Boston,+MA...

neilv• 1 year ago

It's kinda charming when some old-school address or phone number, that perhaps few have used in a long time, still works.

Circa 2010, I bought a vintage Concept2 Model B rowing machine, made in the 1980s, and wanted to fix it up. The paper order form I found for parts was similar to those tiny order forms at the bottom of an ad in an old comic book, where you'd handwrite your return address, and it told you the address to mail it to, with your payment.

Somehow, not only did this address still reach them, but they were set up to fulfill parts orders this way, they actually had the parts for this decades-old model, and sent me the parts (for a pittance), and they tossed in a free service manual.

I already loved the product (from using it at gyms), and now I loved the company.

I wonder what percentage of 25 year-old URLs still work.

INTPenis• 1 year ago

Funny how the later generations of IT people often have poor penmanship.

I'm old enough to remember penmanship in school, but I was into computers from a young age so my penmanship ended up just as bad as author.

I did improve it a lot by getting a penpal through reddit. We communicated for a year and change, and during this time I went through the process of learning to be patient and write my letters slowly so they were legible.

It hurt my hand a lot to write a whole letter and I felt like I had said about as much as I have in this comment, but with time I became faster and faster.

Now probably 10 years later I still take a greater care when I write, ensuring each letter is legible.

gitroom• 1 year ago

man, seeing folks still dealing with mailing letters for code gets me every time - crazy how much the basics trip people up after a few years online. you think well ever really get rid of physical addresses or is this just another forever headache?

andix• 1 year ago

Why should we get rid of physical addresses? It's not really relevant for letters anymore, but people still need to go to places. Deliveries of goods are a bigger thing than ever before.

I can imagine that in the future a company doesn't need to have a physical address to be registered. But we already have that too, PO boxes and addresses where you can register your company without having an office here.

rkagerer• 1 year ago

It's an "I wrote a letter" blog post - which I suppose may be novel for some in today's audience.

TLDR: To save space, some old GPLv2 software didn't include the full license text, instead just a short notice with an address you can contact to obtain it. Blogger did so (glad the address still worked after 30+ years), included return postage (some nifty US stamps bought off eBay), but the reply received was version 3 instead. So they did so again, and received the correct version.

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

Related Stories