[dvlug] dvlug Digest, Vol 154, Issue 2

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Adrianna Frick (frickadrianna at gmail.com):

> I last attended a Berkeley LUG meeting, but I'm in Contra Costa and I'd
> love to meet up with anyone out here. I haven't been able to do Friday
> evenings because we have a preschooler and, frankly, 7pm is like midnight
> for me now. I was also hesitant to spend a Friday night trying to park in
> Walnut Creek for something that wasn't a certainty. I tried to join the
> mailing list on the website, but it didn't seem to go through so I wound up
> here.

Recapping some fairly recent history:  In the last decade (I guess) the
www.dvlug.org Web site has been maintained by Grant Bowman (possibly
with participation of some other people; not sure).  Grant _loves_ to
outsource to vendors.  In 2021, Grant announced that DVLUG was "moving"
its mailing list to $35/month targeted-marketing vendor Mailgun, and
thus told me I needed to remove this mailing list.  

I did not concur.  

(He previously announce in 2014 that he was "moving" it to somewhere
else, and then that flopped, but I don't remember details.)

First, there has been a sad history of DVLUG in multiple eras suffering
from inconsistent and unreliable fads-du-jour.  What has allowed DVLUG 
(repeatedly) to recover from those episodes has been this mailing list,
a place to regroup, plan, socialize, and find the next thing.

Second, I'm able to gladly offer it for free to DVLUG, since I'm already
paying the cost of running a modest Linux server in my home, and the
incremental cost of this forum is about zero.  So, what would be the
advantage from removing it?  Grant had no answer to that question; he
just proclaimed that it should vanish by his personal fiat.

Third, what Mailgun offers is also _not really_ mailing lists.  (a) There
is no mailing list manager software at all, nothing like Mailman or
Sympa.  It's a collective mail alias (like a static /etc/aliases or
~/.forward file on a Linux machine) maintained by Grant personally, where
he confirms your admission and removes you if he dislikes what you say.
(b) Because Mailgun offers no mailing list archive feature, Grant tried
to tack one via third-party site mail-archive.org.  I pointed out to
Grant, at the time, that this kludge doesn't allow him to export and
move the archive if it ever needed rehosting; that he'd just lose all of
the mailing list back-postings.

(c) I now don't see any sign of that archive, _and_ perhaps Grant simply
stopped paying $35/month to Mailgun, since you say joining it "didn't
seem to go through".  So, maybe there no longer is anything there?

(d) There are also very disturbing aspects of Mailgun "mailings lists" 
Grant chose not to talk about, which I mentioned at the time this came
up three years ago:  Every posting on Mailgun goes out with a great deal
of embedded tracking.  In particular, if you mention a URL in one of
your postings, Mailgun will substitute a different URL on each
subscriber copy with a per-recipient hashcode, so that Mailgun and the
owner of the "mailing list" can get notified every time any user visits
that URL, and can be told which subscriber did so.

This modification of postings is because of what Mailman is selling:  It
is selling _marketing campaign_ e-mail facilities to businesses -- not
mailing lists.

FWIW, the moment (in 2021) I mentioned these things on Grant's Mailgun
"mailing list" for DVLUG, he silently removed me from that forum.

And so, I am now disappointed but not surprised to learn that, according
to what you now say, Grant also silently dropped Mailgun -- albeit his 
Web pages still claim DVLUG has its "mailing list" there, and refers to
this mailing list -- the one that actually exists, actually is a mailing
list, and that I provide to DVLUG for free -- as "our previous list".
https://www.dvlug.org/email/

(He talks there about "meeting announcements".  Would I be correct in
guessing there aren't any?)


Maybe one of you could talk to Grant and get him to give DVLUG's Web
site back to DVLUG, since apparently he's given up maintaining it.

Until that happens, efforts to revive DVLUG will be hindered by the bad
and outdated information shown there.


The ownership of domain "dvlug.org" is concealed from public view by its
owner electing "privacy proxy" concealment.  Might be Grant.  Can't
tell.  The owner has outsourced authoritative DNS for the domain to a
pair of nameservers at nearlyfreespeech.net .  (RFCs recommend minimum
3, maximum 7, authoritative nameservers for a domain.)

Traditionally, LUG's run their own nameservers on members' own Linux
machines, and there is mutual free-of-charge nameservice by LUGs and 
individuals helping each other.  Grant or whoever now controls the
dvlug.org domain has elected, instead, to use paid outsourced DNS.
(I was previously one of several community members who provided
dvlug.org nameservice free of charge.)

-- 
Cheers,                            "When you search the Web for answers,
Rick Moen                           may they always be on YouTube."
rick at linuxmafia.com                            -- Edwin Brady's Curse
McQ! (4x80)                        https://jtsteam.bandcamp.com/track/raisins-2