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When I was at the FSF, Google mailed a coupon for free adwords to a bunch of websites, including several thousand coupons to the FSF... we figured it out it was all Joomla websites with a copy of the GPL linked in the footer.


This is both hilarious and horrible. I think the FSF address (both old and new) is one of the most well-known address on the Internet. I have to wonder: how many junkmail do you receive from web scrapers?


Not a lot of junk mail when I was there, but the middle old address (59 Temple Place) no longer exists, so I had some help from Greg KH to remove it from Linux.

When I was there I would get a fair amount of mail from people in prisons, and we'd send them books.


Interesting. Did the prisoners specifically ask for free software related books, or did they simply use FSF as a helpful place for getting all kind of books?


They’d ask for programming books. We always had slightly outdated Emacs manuals around plus stuff like Flex and a book on mastering the command line.


Which is strange, given that most direct-mail marketing companies include de-duplication as part of their service.


Did the FSF use those coupons to advertise its philosophy?


I believe each one needed a unique Google account, so no.

The coupons had seeds embedded in the paper, and they were however put into a compostable bin, so hopefully they're flowers somewhere.


Those "free adwords" coupons are horribly difficult to get out of again (you have to add your CC when you sign up, and it has to be a new account).


I certainly hope they did. They need better out reach. The license is super popular, but not well understood by the general public.




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