Re: Meeting notes, 1/7/02

From: Hua-Pei Chen (hpc@eecs.berkeley.edu)
Date: Fri Jan 11 2002 - 15:23:03 PST

  • Next message: Tom Holub: "Meeting today"

    Hi all,

    I was waiting for the official notes to come out before I send in my two
    cents. I want to make sure I did not miss anything.

    for the record, I like to state that:

    1. My personal belief is that the @berkeley.edu address space is a very
    valuable resource. If we want to do anything with it, we have exactly
    ONE shot at it.

    2. My belief is that the @berkeley.edu is also a "prestigious" space.
    One of the "objections" with uclink/socrates name space is that it is
    "highly polluted". If we continue to have a "self-selectable" name
    space option, my prediction is that it will go down the same path also.
    Maybe with a bit more foresight and limitations we can reduce this, but
    berkeleyans are known for their "creativity", aren't we not?

    3. My vote would be for an "opt-in" but auto-generated name space (such
    as first.last@berkeley.edu), with a possible distinction for students
    and faculty/staff. There should be a policy to resolve conflicts, but
    the name space should not be self-selectable and changeable. This I
    believe requires a continous monitoring and management, one that would
    require more resources than our current directive (?).

    Therefore, I would like to officially take my name off this working
    group should our current proposal be put forward to the campus
    formally. This is purely personal factor.

    Having said that, I like to also add that I do understand where "we" are
    coming from, taking into consideration of the campus, its tradition, its
    constituents, and its state of "resources". If I do not have to
    consider the #1 and #2 above, I would have done exactly the same. And
    since I have been relatively new at the campus (<3 years), I might not
    be a fully qualified ucb person yet to consider all other aspects. I am
    however picking up valuable information for our own (eecs) deployment of
    "friendly name space email addresses", so I would like to request the
    group that I continue to participate in this working group, annonymously
    (;-) of course, until the group presents its final report.

    Tom Holub wrote:
    >
    > (Next meeting, Monday, 1/14, at 11:00 AM in 261 Campbell)
    >
    > We began with a discussion of the CalNet decision to protect the privacy of
    > the CalNet friendly name. Lucia wasn't at that meeting (and JC wasn't at
    > ours), but her impression was that it won't be protected at the level of
    > FERPA information, it just won't be published. When staff and faculty
    > choose a friendly name, they'll be given a choice of all the names they
    > currently own in the uclink/socrates name space, but they can choose a
    > different name if they want to (if it's not taken). Students may not get
    > a friendly CalNet ID. (Gordon) So we can't use the CalNet friendly name,
    > if students won't have one. (Tom) We wouldn't be exclusively using the
    > CalNet friendly name, it would just be one of the options. Students would
    > probably pick their uclink name, or a new name.
    >
    > (Tim) What about the idea of using the left-hand-side of whatever address
    > each person has listed in CalNet? Whether it's user@uclink or user@haas.
    > That must be a preferred friendly name to some extent. We just need to
    > figure out how to handle conflicts.
    >
    > (Jerry) What about namespace restrictions? The namespace isn't restricted
    > to 8 characters, but what about periods, underscores, dashes, etc.? We
    > should look into what is accepted in the namespace. We probably want to be
    > as liberal as possible...what about Danielle_Hawn-Bluey (a real
    > example--Tom)?
    >
    > At this point we were coming to something resembling a begrudging consensus.
    > The proposal is:
    >
    > Someone goes to a web page to choose a Berkeley.EDU forwarding address.
    > They are given a list of choices, including any names they own in the
    > socrates/uclink/calnet namespace, plus the LHS of whatever they have listed
    > as an address in CalNet. They can choose something else as long as it's
    > not taken in the socrates/uclink/calnet namespace. (And if they do, it's
    > reserved for all those other systems).
    >
    > We took a vote. Everyone's hands were raised, except mine, which was
    > half-raised, and Janet's. Zane and Michael both agreed with me that
    > the solution isn't what we'd prefer, but it seems necessary if we're to
    > move forward. We appear to have made our first decision.
    >
    > We discussed briefly where this web page would exist. Certainly as part
    > of the CalNet directory update, and possibly bilink too. Anywhere we can
    > put a checkbox that says "also use this as my berkeley.edu address" seems
    > good.
    >
    > The second topic of discussion was whether we make the system opt-in only,
    > or whether we generate addresses. After the SurePay experience, people are
    > wary of anything except opt-in. (We wouldn't be running our service on an
    > unpatched IIS server with an unregistered 40-bit SSL certificate, but the
    > point stands).
    >
    > (Tom) The availability of @University.EDU addresses is prevalent--if you
    > look at the other UC's, only UCSC doesn't have at least some listed in their
    > directory (they use @cats.ucsc.edu, a uclink analogue). UCLA has some @ucla,
    > others with addresses like @mednet.ucla.edu and @geog.ucla.edu. The rest of
    > the UC's all have primarily or solely @UCx.EDU addresses in their online
    > directories. (Jerry) When I looked at uclink's mail logs, it didn't look
    > like people at UC Riverside were using @ucr.edu addresses. [We fired up the
    > computer projector to check it out] It looks like they're using
    > auto-generated first.last@ucr.edu addresses in their directory, but maybe
    > people are actually publishing different addresses.
    >
    > The tenor of the comments was aiming towards having the service be opt-in.
    > We took another vote, this time with all but Tom and Janet raising their
    > hands. [We're going to start a committee of our own.] But in terms of what
    > this commitee is going to put it, it seems like we've now decided that
    > the service should be opt-in for everyone.
    >
    > Having made those decisions, we wrapped up the meeting. Next week we'll
    > begin talking about technical implementation. Our aim is to have a report
    > ready for the February ITAC meeting.
    >
    > --
    > Tom Holub (tom_holub@LS.Berkeley.EDU, 510-642-9069)
    > College of Letters & Science
    > 249 Campbell Hall

    -- 
    ..Pei
    -----------------------------------------------------------------------
    Hua-Pei Chen			hpc@eecs.berkeley.edu
    Director of Computing 		UC Berkeley EECS Dept.
    				510-642-5836 (office) 510-642-5775 (fax)
    



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