Short version: Robert Austin Company has bit the dust, giving us an opportunity and motive to fix up a lingering mess on the BALUG pages. Suggested fix is eliminate mention of RobAusCo (and related directions & map) and link to CABAL meetings as "meeting/installfests".

Long version:

Long-time BALUG people will remember the 100% Linux-based CoffeeNet Internet cafe in SoMa. I helped build the place, and lived in an apartment over it. A lot of the Bay Area Linux community revolved around that building.

Another tenant at the building, in a downstairs room behind the coffee house, starting '94, was San Francisco PC User Group. SFpcUG was a disaster as a tenant and moved out in '97, but had one very successful SIG, the Linux SIG, that met in SFpcUG's room twice a month (2nd and 4th Saturdays, 4 PM).

When SFpcUG pulled out, the new tenant, Don Marti and Jim Gleason's open source consulting firm Electric Lichen LLC, didn't want a group mostly devoted to legacy proprietary software (i.e., SFpcUG) meeting in its office. But I ensured that Linux meetings kept occuring at the SIG's regular times. The same people (including me) attended, in fact: The only thing different was that it was no longer under SFpcUG.

Since all of the SIG people attended BALUG meetings, we decided we were an unofficial BALUG SIG -- and BALUG didn't mind. We started holding installfests in the CoffeeNet building and elsewhere, as described here: http://balug.org/ml/balug-talk/msg00357.html

Enter the Robert Austin Company (RobAusCo), a small firm that put on weekend computer (retail) swap meets ("shows") at the Cow Palace and Oakland Convention Center. RobAusCo CEO Mike Lord was a frequent CoffeeNet customer, was very impressed by it, and tried to talk CoffeeNet proprietor Richard Couture into operating mini-CoffeeNets inside Robert Austin shows. Richard considered this impractical and declined, but suggested Lord speak to the Linux SIG. He did, and proposed that we do Linux lectures inside his firm's computer shows.

We did that, but also talked him into letting us do "Linux installfests" there, which were a big success: Some 5000 members per day of the general computing public, while shopping for cheap hardware/software, would encounter deliberately flamboyant Linux systems and community volunteers -- at a time when few mainstream PC users knew of Linux. The installfests were very successful at getting the word out to the _uninitiated_ -- in contrast to the (worthwhile!) installfests put on by SVLUG, NBLUG, CalLUG, SlugLUG, SacLUG, and LUGOD, which strictly preached to the choir, and which we also assisted.

Our installfests were billed as BALUG events, initially, and listed on BALUG's Web site. However, the SIG acquired a name of its own in 1998, when we scheduled an installfest but were infromed by BALUG webmaster Cyndy Fire Eisner that she couldn't list our event because BALUG president Arthur Tyde was out of the country and couldn't be reached to approve it. After some thinking, we asked Cydny if she would have any problem listing a non-BALUG event, and she said no, so we used Duncan MacKinnon's suggestion of "Consortium of All Bay Area Linux" (CABAL) in honour of our staffing installfests all over the Bay Area -- and that became the umbrella name for all subsequent SIG events including its twice-monthly meetings, although we retained our loose affiliation with BALUG. CABAL was run at the time by Duncan, Mike Higashi, and Doug Lym.

Starting March 1998, with the release of Mozilla, and especially September 1998, when almost all SQL database vendors suddenly announced imminent shipment of Linux versions (after Informix broke the dam), suddenly just about _every_ general computerist had heard of Linux. Gradually it became apparent from the changed reaction to our presence at RobAusCo shows that our motive for holding installfests there had largely evaporate: That PR battle had been conclusively won. We kept holding installfests intermittantly through 2003, but with decreasing frequency. (It's a major hassle for a team of Linux volunteers to get up early on a Saturday, pack a large amount of gear into boxes, drive to Daly City or Oakland, pay for parking, unpack and drag our gear in, sit at the installfest tables for six hours sipping bad coffee, and then shlep everything back when the show closes at 4 PM.)

Meanwhile, with the CoffeeNet building shutting down in July 2000, I moved residences to my present house in west Menlo Park, and offered CABAL emergency meeting space there while it tried to find substitute meeting space in San Francisco. It never did find such space, and so became a de-facto Peninsula LUG, even though it remained in theory a San Francisco-based one. Each of the twice-monthly meetings at my house effectively _is_ an installfest, as it features lots of table space, network and power drops, etc., and people bring computers to install / tweak Linux on.

About a month ago, I heard that RobAusCo had folded. The firm's Web site (http://www.robertaustin.com/) still exists and claims the firm is "On Vacation", but that appears to be wishful thinking, as all of the company's listed telephone numbers have been disconnected. It's gone to meet its maker. It is no more. It is an ex-firm.

The "lingering mess" relates to what has been resulting from BALUG's (much appreciated!) front-page link to CABAL regarding installfests: We get a _lot_ of e-mailed queries, but they inevitably start out by asking when is the next installfest, obliging us to explain, over and over, that the querent should just bring his/her PC to the next regular CABAL meeting in Menlo Park, and that it's much nicer there than at RobAusCo venues anyway. It sometimes takes a while to get across the concept.

What I think we should do:

CABAL site: Change all the reference to "meetings" to say "meeting/installfest". Heck, that's what they really are, anyway.

BALUG site: Expunge "Robert Austin Show" references, and ditto driving directions and map to RobAusCo sites. Substitute direct reference to the BALUG-affiliated CABAL meeting/installfests.

Thanks for your patience in slogging through this explanation and request.