home
***
CD-ROM
|
disk
|
FTP
|
other
***
search
/
linuxmafia.com 2016
/
linuxmafia.com.tar
/
linuxmafia.com
/
smaug
/
htdocs
/
info.sub
< prev
next >
Wrap
Text File
|
2005-11-14
|
7KB
|
179 lines
<h3>
<font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-1">
The Early Days
</font>
</h3>
<p>
<font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-1">
Smaug was founded (as "Santa Cruz Microsoft-Alternative User Group", or
SMAUG) in October 2000 by area resident Jacob M. Hunter, using Web space
and a mailing list at his employer NetLine, and the "scruz.org" domain
name, which Silicon Valley Linux enthusiast Alvin Oga (and some other
domains, paid for by VA Linux) registered for the group. Initial
meetings — always free of charge and open to the public —
were in rooms graciously offered by Santa Cruz Operation (SCO) near the
Hwy 9 / Hwy 1 junction. There were and are no membership dues.
</font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-1">
SMAUG was intended partly to fill the gap left when Santa Cruz Linux
User Group, which had met at Got.net's offices in the nearby Sawmill
building, went inactive a year or two before. But it was also intended
as a home for other users of non-Wintel systems, such as the BSD family,
BeOS, Atheos, and so on. And, unlike many groups, SMAUG from its
beginning deliberately attempted to be both technical and social,
without apology — and to plan a group role in community service.
</font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-1">
The mailing list at NetLine (hosted using Lyris software on Solaris)
proved very limited: Only the first dozen or so lines of each message
got sent out unless/until you signed up for commercial service. (But
it did have the advantage of transparent access to the list via NNTP
newsreaders.) Within a month, Jacob accepted a kind offer by Silicon
Valley Linux User Group to host a replacement mailing list on its GNU
Mailman server, and the Web site (initially at
http://www.orangeonyx.com/linux/) was moved to a virtual host on
SourceForge.net (still using the scruz.org domain).
</font>
</p>
<h3>
<font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-1">
Trouble
</font>
</h3>
<p>
<font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-1">
2001 brought SMAUG a couple of unpleasant surprises: First, company
changes at SCO, following sale of most of its business to Caldera
Systems, Inc. (which became the new SCO Group, in Utah)
caused the sudden and permanent unavailability of the group's meeting
space. Nobody at SCO bothered to inform SMAUG of this, so would-be
attendees arrived for the January 8 organisational meeting to find only
a locked door, and no time or opportunity to arrange a substitute
meeting venue.
</font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-1">
About this time, the mailing list broke, and was not fixed until early
February — so the meeting-site problem couldn't even be effectively
discussed.
</font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-1">
Further, after the mailing list came back, we found out one of the
reasons there needed to be an organisational meeting: Jacob had changed
jobs, and also began taking classes in the evenings, and so would have
to mostly bow out of the group's affairs.
</font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-1">
The February 8, 2001 meeting was intended to be that organisational
meeting, and to straighten out the group's affairs a bit.
Unfortunately, the best venue anyone could come up with, Saturn Cafe
on Pacific Avenue, albeit friendly enough was far too noisy to conduct
group business. Moreover, the main agenda item — meeting
space — proved somewhat intractable: All suggestions required
either some fees for space rental (SC Public Library, Louden Center,
Salvation Army, Veteran's Hall) or required personal connections the
group lacked (Cabrillo College), or were way out of town. No solutions
presented themselves.
</font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-1">
In March, the scruz.org domain stopped working, such that the Web site
was only reachable by the unwieldy URL of
<a href="http://smaug-web.sourceforge.net/">smaug-web.sourceforge.net/</a>.
The scruz.org domain expired entirely in October.
</font>
</p>
<h3>
<font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-1">
Revival
</font>
</h3>
<p>
<font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-1">
On December 3, 2001, SMAUG held another organisational meeting at Cafe
Pergolessi, which was not considered suitable over the long term on
account of loud music and limited room. The group discussed, again, a
number of meeting-place options, finally arriving at one that (for
a while) worked: downtown brewpub "99 Bottles of Beer". Later that
month, David A. Gatwood revamped the Web pages at SourceForge and
related CVS setup, Eric Cain re-registered the scruz.org domain, and
Rick Moen fixed the SourceForge virtual-host configuration so that <a
href="http://www.scruz.org">www.scruz.org</a> worked again.
</font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-1">
At the January 7, 2002 meeting, SMAUGers decided to drop the acronym,
and thus the group become Smaug, settled on "99 Bottles of Beer"
(upstairs room) as interim space for what will be regular, first-Monday
8 PM meetings, and formed a few informal sub-groups.
</font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-1">
Unfortunately, in October 2002, "99 Bottles of Beer" began having
<a href="http://lists.svlug.org/archives/smaug/2002q4/000816.html">
Monday night football and karaoke</a> during the nights Smaug would want
to use, making the locale too loud. Meetings ceased, pending someone
(once again) finding a reasonable meeting spot.
</font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-1">
In December, 2003, the scruz.org domain was due to expire again, and
no local Smaug member was willing to pay the renewal. However, a
kind benefactor named Crawford Rainwater (President and CEO of Linux
training and consulting firm "The Linux ETC Company" in Louisville, CO)
<a href="http://lists.svlug.org/archives/smaug/2003q4/000970.html">stepped
forward</a> to take stewardship of the domain from Eric Cain (as the new
domain Registrant) and keep it paid many years in advance.
</font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-1">
On September 14, 2004, Phil White finally found a good long-term meeting
space for Smaug at Tiny's Family Restaurant in Capitola, and we changed
the group's regular meeting date to 3rd Mondays.
</font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-1">
On March 3, 2005, Phil White and others changed the meeting frequency
(still at Tiny's Family Restaurant) from one Monday a month to
<em>every</em> Monday.
</font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-1">
And so it goes.
</font>
</p>