Older blog entries for roozbeh (starting at number 16)

It's official. They didn't give me the Egyptian visa on time. The Interests Office in Tehran provides no reason!

This is the third time ever I have not got a visa on time. The first time was Egyptians again, but the meeting got cancelled anyway, because it was supposed to happen on September 12, 2001. The second time it was the Irish, who finally gave us a visa, but about a week late for GU4DEC, which me and Elnaz (who's my wife now) used for a holiday, visiting Michael Everson, a very dear friend.

Miguel: Nice reading, thanks a lot.

Nat: That somehow sets a deadline (June, 2005) if you wish to hire me!

But finally, for those who may be able to read French, possibly the best non-fiction originally in Persian that I've read is now translated to French. It's Ebrahim Nabavi's Couloir n° 6, which is simply a prison diary for the time when Nabavi, a satirist, was arrested for writing political satire but was jailed with financial prisoners instead of political ones (for the fear of helping their mood), or being put in a solitary cell (as is normal in Iran these days). So, the book somehow becomes an elite view into the lives of the very normal people, like an old man remaining in prison for a few years for of a debt of about EUR 50, unable to pay it back because he has neither family and friend who could pay it for him, nor he can earn any money inside the prison.

The Egyptian embassy doesn't like the invitation letter as scanned, emailed, and printed. They prefer a lower quality fax, which they call "the orignial invitation letter". OK, they'll gonna get it!

<crying how="OUT LOUD">
Jeff, please post my hackergotchi on Planet GNOME!
<crying>

The national Iranian Motorcycle and Automobile Federation finally announced the results of our first Speed -Time-Distance road rally. Out of about 180 teams, we ranked 27th, with 135 negative points. It wasn’t an amateur rally, many national champions also participated. It was something like free for all.

I was not involved in the driving (I don’t know how to drive) or much in navigating (I look at the map too much, ignoring the road or the features): I was sitting at the back calculating the times and speeds and all using a solar calculator and large pieces of paper (between two and four people were allowed in each car). When I checked the numbers later, I hadn’t made a single error, all that with a solar calculator which didn’t work properly in the early morning. (I somehow reprogrammed it about 10 times, the program was reset every time we went under a bridge or something.)

But why did we only rank 27th? Well, one of the instructions on a map was “During this map, don’t add 15 minutes to your due time”, which meant that you should ignore the instruction completely (it was a trap). We had automatically read this as “add 15 minutes”, because, a) the high stress would only let you read everything as they would most possiblity mean, and b) the Persian terms for add and don’t add, were only different in one single duplicated letter in this case: “اضافه نمائید” vs “اضافه ننمائید”. This was early in the game, so we were about 15 minutes late for each of the seven or eight time controls after that, which explains about 100 of those negative points. We didn't find about the trap until we passed the finish line.

I don’t have the score sheet yet, but I really believe that without those 100 points, we would have been in top three. Too great for first-timers!

Congratulations, Danilo!

If things go OK, I will be to Cairo during April 11 and 12, talking about the Persian language/Iranian experience with electronic/online content (including Unicode, blogs, etc). All depends on the Egyptian "Interests Office" being working during Iranian holidays or not.

I have received lots of feedback about Fedora's EULA vs GPL, which is leaving me very confused. Basically, I'm starting to believe that the complications are in the US sanctions/restrictons themselves, and not necessarily in the way they interact with GPL. More to come after I read all the feedback I got, but the more I read, the more I believe I was right in the assumption that Fedora's EULA has serious problems.

I am just back to work after three and a half days out of office, during Iranian New Year holidays, which will be March 18-April 2 this year (yes, sixteen long days). Not all of those days are holidays officially, but all business practically goes to a halt during the time, and many people take a leave during the days that are not official holidays. This time, March 20 (occuring on our Esfand 30, the leap day) was called an officialy holiday by the government, so, considering that Fridays are holidays in Iran and there are also Islamic holidays, the only official business days during that period are March 26-30.

Some people claim that Iran has the world record in the number of official holidays. I don't have the number for other countries, but in Iran:

• Every Friday is a holiday.
• Every Thursday is half closed (banks, government offices, and many businesses are only open until the noon or are totally closed, etc).
• There are ten solar holidays.
• There are fifteen lunar holidays, each occuring once in every 355 days or so.
• Sometimes but not often, a single day with a holiday on each side gets declared a holiday.

So, yes, today is the first day in the Persian Year 1384, and nobody but me is breathing in the whole building.

It's been a long time since I am struggling with this question: "Isn't Fedora Core's EULA a violation of GPL?"

Quoting just an example from the EULA:

By downloading, installing or using the Software, User agrees to the terms of this agreement.[...]

5. EXPORT CONTROL. As required by U.S. law, User represents and warrants that it: [...] (c) will not export, re-export, or transfer the Software to any prohibited destination, entity, or individual without the necessary export license(s) or authorizations(s) from the U.S. Government; [...]

Isn't this in contradiction with section 6 of the GPL that says:

[...] You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein. [...]

If it is really a requirement of US law for Red Hat to bind the user with those requirements, doesn't section 7 of the GPL restrict Red Hat not to publish the software?

7. If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues), conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not excuse you from the conditions of this License. If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all.[...]

If you are the author of any GPL-ed piece of software included in Fedora Core, I would appreciate it very much to know your opinion (I am roozbeh@farsiweb.info). This is a clear GPL violation to me.

I was planning to contact FSF about this. Any better recommendation?

Dave: I confess that I got trapped in the "IP" thing. But I still can't consider EU committed enough.

BTW, I really hope the company can pay for GUADEC. I'm not sure we can pay both the salaries and the ticket costs while Samsung Iran is suggesting barter, Shell Iran is still discussing with their Dutch lawyers about legal implications of them using an Iranian distro instead of the Red Hat 9 they use now, and we are losing government contracts we are most eligible to because of people thinking Open Source is the same as public domain.

That's the main reason we haven't yet bothered with asking for invitation letters.