Open and Free Technology Community

Open and Free Technology Community

Founded	2001
Geographic location	Europe United States
Website URL	www.oftc.net
Primary DNS	irc.oftc.net
Average users	8,000
Average channels	1,700 - 1,800
Average servers	21
Content/subject	Public/Unrestricted

The Open and Free Technology Community (OFTC) is an IRC network that provides collaboration services to members of the free software community in any part of the world. OFTC is an associated project of Software in the Public Interest, a non-profit organization which was founded to help organizations develop and distribute open hardware and software. Their servers are all accessible from the domain name irc.oftc.net. OFTC currently has 32 volunteer staff members, and 21 sponsors.^[1]

History

OFTC was founded at the end of 2001 by a group of experienced members of the open source and free software communities aiming to provide these communities with better communication, development, and support infrastructure. OFTC is ruled by a written constitution and the staff elect the officers among each other using a voting mechanism. OFTC became a member project of Software in the Public Interest (SPI) in July 2002, and SPI became the legal owner of the project's domain names.

Projects

OFTC currently develops 3 projects for its purposes: "oftc-hybrid", the IRC daemon, "oftc-ircservices", the IRC services suite, and "oftc-oftcdns", a GeoIP DNS responder to handle user distribution across the servers. OFTC uses Trac for its source browsing and bug tracking. Prospective users of the software can find tarball releases at http://www.oftc.net/releases/. Developers contributing to the code base should read and be familiar with Subversion.

References

1. ^ "Staff". OFTC. http://www.oftc.net/oftc/Staff. Retrieved 2010-05-28. 

Further reading

• Brockmeier, Joe (May 22, 2007). "Freenode and OFTC IRC networks buddy up". Linux.com. http://www.linux.com/archive/articles/62098. Retrieved October 15, 2010. 
• "Freenode and OFTC Networks Start Cooperation". IRC-Junkie.org. May 23, 2007. http://www.irc-junkie.org/2007-05-23/freenode-and-oftc-networks-start-cooperation/. Retrieved October 15, 2010. 
• "Debian IRC Network moves to OFTC". Debian. June 4th, 2006. http://www.debian.org/News/2006/20060604. Retrieved October 15, 2010. 

External links

• OFTC Homepage
• OFTC at Advogato