The Open and Free Technology Community (OFTC) is an

IRC Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is a text-based chat system for instant messaging. IRC is designed for group communication in discussion forums, called '' channels'', but also allows one-on-one communication via private messages as well as chat an ...

network Network, networking and networked may refer to: Science and technology * Network theory, the study of graphs as a representation of relations between discrete objects * Network science, an academic field that studies complex networks Mathematics ...

that provides collaboration services to members of the

free software community The free software movement is a social movement with the goal of obtaining and guaranteeing certain freedoms for software users, namely the freedoms to run the software, to study the software, to modify the software, and to share copies of the ...

in any part of the world. OFTC is an associated project of

Software in the Public Interest Software in the Public Interest, Inc. (SPI) is a US 501(c)(3) non-profit organization domiciled in New York State formed to help other organizations create and distribute free open-source software and open-source hardware. Anyone is eligible to ...

, a non-profit organization which was founded to help organizations develop and distribute open hardware and software. As of October 2019, OFTC has 31 volunteer staff members, and 16 sponsors.

History

OFTC was founded at the end of 2001 by a group of experienced members of the

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

and

free software Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, no ...

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

(SPI) in July 2002, and SPI became the legal owner of the project's

domain names A domain name is a string that identifies a realm of administrative autonomy, authority or control within the Internet. Domain names are often used to identify services provided through the Internet, such as websites, email services and more. As ...

. The ability for all users to connect using

Transport Layer Security Transport Layer Security (TLS) is a cryptographic protocol designed to provide communications security over a computer network. The protocol is widely used in applications such as email, instant messaging, and voice over IP, but its use in securi ...

was added in April 2016 with the use of SSL certificates from the

Let's Encrypt Let's Encrypt is a non-profit certificate authority run by Internet Security Research Group (ISRG) that provides X.509 certificates for Transport Layer Security (TLS) encryption at no charge. It is the world's largest certificate authority, used ...

certificate authority In cryptography, a certificate authority or certification authority (CA) is an entity that stores, signs, and issues digital certificates. A digital certificate certifies the ownership of a public key by the named subject of the certificate. This ...

. In 2016, OFTC was bridged to the

Matrix Matrix most commonly refers to: * ''The Matrix'' (franchise), an American media franchise ** ''The Matrix'', a 1999 science-fiction action film ** "The Matrix", a fictional setting, a virtual reality environment, within ''The Matrix'' (franchis ...

instant messaging network.

Projects

OFTC currently develops three projects for its purposes: "oftc-hybrid" (a fork of the Hybrid

IRC daemon An IRCd, short for Internet Relay Chat daemon, is server software that implements the IRC protocol, enabling people to talk to each other via the Internet (exchanging textual messages in real time). It is distinct from an IRC bot that connects ou ...

), "oftc-ircservices" (the IRC services suite), and "oftc-geodns" (a

GeoIP In computing, Internet geolocation is software capable of deducing the geographic position of a device connected to the Internet. For example, the device's IP address can be used to determine the country, city, or ZIP code, determining its geogra ...

DNS responder to handle user distribution across the servers). OFTC uses

GitHub GitHub, Inc. () is an Internet hosting service for software development and version control using Git. It provides the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, continuous ...

repositories to host its

codebase In software development, a codebase (or code base) is a collection of source code used to build a particular software system, application, or software component. Typically, a codebase includes only human-written source code files; thus, a codeb ...

and

issue tracker An issue tracking system (also ITS, trouble ticket system, support ticket, request management or incident ticket system) is a computer software package that manages and maintains lists of issues. Issue tracking systems are generally used in colla ...

. Prospective users of the software can find tarball releases at https://www.oftc.net/releases/, named according to

semantic versioning Software versioning is the process of assigning either unique ''version names'' or unique ''version numbers'' to unique states of computer software. Within a given version number category (e.g., major or minor), these numbers are generally assig ...

. Developers contributing to the code base should read and be familiar with

Subversion Subversion () refers to a process by which the values and principles of a system in place are contradicted or reversed in an attempt to transform the established social order and its structures of power, authority, hierarchy, and social norms. Sub ...

References

External links

* * * {{Software in the Public Interest Internet Relay Chat networks Free software culture and documents Tor onion services

History

Projects

References

Further reading

External links