[buug] Reviving CalLUG

[Mark Lu]

Good point. I tend to be quite far on the practical end of things when 
it comes to the idealistic/practical spectrum, and the main thing on my 
mind was only how to get the mailing list accomplished in the simplest 
(but not necessarily best) way. Thanks for the reminder of something 
that may be very important for a huge portion of our target members.

In terms of access, I'd actually argue that there's no real disadvantage 
in running sessions in Dwinelle or Barrows, which are open until 
midnight and 11pm respectively, unlike Soda Hall, which is restricted by 
keycard after 6:30pm. They're accessible and provide for greater 
exposure to the general population.

On 04/20/2011 12:15 PM, Rick Moen wrote:
> Quoting Mark Lu (excelblue at gmail.com):
>
>> The real advantage to bringing back CalLUG is the ability to reserve
>> rooms on-campus for free.
> Yes, indeed.
>
> CalLUG got a lot of mileage out of that, tending to use Soda Hall for
> that.  There was a minor problem that access into the building was
> restricted after a certain hour.
>
>> I have experience with running my own Mailman, though, to be honest, I
>> think we should just look at registering a domain name and leeching
>> off Google Groups if we just want a list that works, is easily (and
>> publicly) searchable, and is reliable.
> I notice without objection your GMail address.  ;->   FWIW, some of us
> decline to turn over our computing lives to Google, Inc., and enjoy
> the functional advantages of being able to enforce our own policies,
> implement the sort of antispam _we_ want, not be subject to
> Google, Inc.'s takedown policies, not have to deal with yet more
> of Google, Inc.'s advertising and tracking[1], and so on.
>
> Also FWIW, http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Linux_PR/newlug.html points out
> another consideration:
>
>    23. Walk the walk.
>
>    It's painfully grotesque to see so-called Linux user groups mailing out
>    announcements using MS-Outlook, Eudora, or Netscape Messenger for
>    MS-Windows (or MacOS), or other proprietary mailers for legacy operating
>    systems -- and visibly maintaining their Web sites using MS Front Page,
>    Adobe Page Mill, or other junkware -- and hosting their LUG mailing
>    lists on Yahoo Groups (formerly eGroups and Onelist, formerly MakeList)
>    or Google Groups. Fortunately, these LUGs are in the minority, but they
>    convey the message of Linux being suitable in neither desktop nor server
>    roles.
>
>    If you are going to promote and explore Linux, you need to _use it_.
>
> Google Groups is not only proprietary software, but also _hosted_
> proprietary software, i.e., you don't even have a copy of it in the
> first place, nor do you host your data.
>
>
> As a third FWIW, in the recent past, I helped Peter Knagg overcome the
> obstacles to migrating PenLUG to an Exim4/SA-Exim/Mailman setup, and I
> believe he's mighty pleased so far.
>
> Anyway, as Dennis Miller used to say, 'But that's just my opinion.  I
> could be wrong.'
>
>
> [1] http://wendy.seltzer.org/blog/archives/2009/12/08/personalized-search-opacity.html
> http://kitenet.net/~joey/blog/entry/adieu_google/
>
>
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