Simon Willison’s Weblog

I wrote to the address in the GPLv2 license notice and received the GPLv3 license. Fun story from Mendhak who noticed that the GPLv2 license used to include this in the footer:

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.

So they wrote to the address (after hunting down the necessary pieces for a self-addressed envelope from the USA back to the UK) and five weeks later received a copy.

(The copy was the GPLv3, but since they didn't actually specify GPLv2 in their request I don't think that's particularly notable.)

The comments on Hacker News included this delightful note from Davis Remmel:

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.

Someone asked "How many per day were you sending out?". The answer:

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

The FSF moved out of 51 Franklin Street in 2024, after 19 years in that location. They work remotely now - their new mailing address, 31 Milk Street, # 960789, Boston, MA 02196, is a USPS PO Box.