[buug] Reviving CalLUG

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Paul Ivanov (pi at berkeley.edu):

> Rick Moen, on 2011-04-19 14:00,  wrote:
> > I gather from the announcement that you would write to CalMail Staff
> > <consult at berkeley.edu>, to step up and take over as listadmin.
> 
> done.

Coolness.

> Also, looking at the website for starting a club - it looks like it
> may have to be renamed, due to an apparently *ridiculous* policy:

And Mark Lu commented:

> It's some legal ramifications that they have to protect themselves
> against -- namely, the possible loss of their trademark.

...though the usage described poses no real threat to those trademarks,
especially if accompanied by small-print acknowledgements like 'Cal is a
trademark of the Regents of the University of California'.  (This
assumes such a Federal or common-law trademark actually exists, which is
a separate matter.)  Anyway, the short version is that that the
realities of trademark law make companies and institutions a little
crazy, and we just have to deal with the fallout.  If interested in more
about why this happens, Cory Doctorow has written one of the best short
explanations, here:

http://openp2p.com/pub/a/p2p/2003/08/14/trademarks.html

Longer compendia of explanations (mine), for the obsessed:
http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Licensing_and_Law/trademark-law.html
http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Licensing_and_Law/trademark-law.add

Paul Ivanov went on:


> Seems like the second name, since it's been approved, might be
> the path of least resistance.

Here's something that sometimes gets lost in these discussions, and it
might be obvious (no condescension intended), but I'll say it anyway:
You're the bloke doing (the lion's share of) the actual work, so you get
to decide how best to proceed.

Intending _not_ to make any exception to that general guideline, but
just as an idea to ponder, I'll add:  You might wish to look into
whether it's workable to have the club _officially_ be something
tailored to UCB's trademark policy (e.g., GNU/Linux User Group at Cal)
but retaining an unofficial identity as 'CalLUG'.  

The policy blatt at http://campuslife.berkeley.edu/orgs/new-group
doesn't specifically discourage such measures.  If they harrumph and
object, you can always rename things.

Reasons why:  

1. 'CalLUG' is much less a mouthful than all of the painful
circumlocutions required to placate crazed staff attorneys.

2.  The two mailing lists already exist with 'CalLUG' in their names,
and _also_ existing prior Web site contents exist that can be unearthed
and repurposed (again, _if the active volunteers so wish_):

The Web site existed at at bewildering chain of URLs that at one time or
another existed as HTTP 302 redirects:

http://linux.berkeley.edu/
http://linux.berkeley.edu:80 
http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~linux/
http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu:80/~linux/
http://callug.cs.berkeley.edu/apache2-default/

(The last of those never had anything but a stub.)

When the site was last active, it was a Drupal thing:
http://replay.web.archive.org/20060706064503/http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~linux/
I personally have some aesthetic and functional qualms with Drupal, but
to each his own.[1]

Here's Internet Archive's final snapshot of the pre-Drupal site:
http://replay.web.archive.org/20050404113823/http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~linux/mirror/
Snapshots at that URL go back to Oct. 2, 2002, FYI.  Rummaging around in
the directory-parent of that URL tree may also unearth useful things:
http://replay.web.archive.org/20050404113823/http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~linux/

3.  'CalLUG' still has substantial, and thus possibly useful name recognition.
See for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CalLUG.


Reasons why not:

1.  A group that mostly died in the mid-2000s and completely died in
2007 can't have _that_ much name recognition except among doddering
geezers like me.  That's a long time in dog^W Internet years.

2.  Mailing lists can be renamed (with admin help).  Web site contents 
can be used with a name change.  'sed' continues to work.  ;->






> The hosting resources available to official student organizations
> (clubs) is itself provided by a student org: the Open Computing
> Facillity (OCF). There's a good chance that some OCF members
> would also be interested in reviving CalLUG.

I'm glad you mentioned that.  As you'll see from the above-cited URL 
chain, CalLUG was indeed an OCF production.  


[1] Long and contentious topic best indulged elsewhere, and 
<facetious>you don't want the CMS mafia mad at you, or you might wake up
with a dead copy of Plone next to you in your bed.</facetious>  
Drupal is one arguable way of pursuing Rule One of system
administration, which is 'Automate the hell out of everything you
possibly can.'