[buug] Reviving CalLUG

[Rick Moen]

I was just poking around a little more, and notice something possibly
worth mentioning:

> I say 'vetted' because lists.berkeley.edu appears to (nowadays) run GNU
> Mailman (with which I'm intimately familiar), replacing the antique
> majordomo setup originally present.  Unless configured not to do so,
> Mailman checks the deliverability (using VERP) of all subscribed addresses 
> periodically.
> 
> FYI, the original mailing list host was brain.cs.berkeley.edu.  Then, it
> was callug.cs.berkeley.edu, and finally the current lists.berkeley.edu
> (which is of course no longer CalLUG-specific).

One of GNU Mailman's built-in features -- and one of the reasons for
mass-migration to it away from majordomo in the '90s -- is its
automatic maintenance of Web archives of back postings, which by default
are public.

For example, the Menlo Park LUG 'CABAL' operates general discussion
mailing list 'conspire' (silly joke, I know), which has this Mailman
'listinfo' page automatically generated by a Mailman CGI:

http://linuxmafia.com/mailman/listinfo/conspire
...and that, in turn, gives direct access to the mailing list's public
archives of all postings going back to December 2000, when I converted
all my mailing lists from majordomo to Mailman.
http://linuxmafia.com/pipermail/conspire/

In the process of being moded from CalLUG's own server (brain, callug)
to UCB's Campuswide IT Services's 'CalMail' site (lists.berkeley.edu),
_apparently_ the feature of public archiving has been lost.  I cannot
find any entry point to archives -- although it's possible that one is 
available NONpublicly to persons after CalNet login.

I also cannot find Mailman-type listinfo pages.  Instead, we see
something seemingly generated by Campuswide IT Services' bespoke
software:

https://calmail.berkeley.edu/manage/list/listinfo/callug_discuss@lists.berkeley.edu
https://calmail.berkeley.edu/manage/list/listinfo/callug_announce@lists.berkeley.edu

In short, it seems like they've used the SMTP functionality from
GNU Mailman, but gone out of their way to disable its CGI Web interface
completely.  That's a shame, I guess, but on the bright side it's
preserved the two mailing lists to the present day.

Paul and Mark:  If you ever get to the point of wanting to do so, I 
can show you how to migrate the full mailing lists (including
full back-postings archives) away from CalMail to a real Mailman
installation under your control.  OTOH, you might decide that letting
Campuswide IT Services be the sysadmins is kinda nice despite the
feature disabling.