IRC

Much OSGeo related communication happens in IRC (Internet Relay Chat), an instant messaging protocol. Lots of general information on IRC is available in Wikipedia.

Clients
IRC requires IRC client software. There are a wide variety of clients available:

Desktop IRC clients

 * A nice IRC client is for example https://hexchat.github.io/
 * Thunderbird (email client) has a great IRC client that is included in the default installation: see https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/instant-messaging-and-chat

Browser IRC plugins

 * Chrome has several IRC apps/extensions, including CIRC
 * The ChatZilla client is available for Firefox users on all platforms. (not supported as of Firefox Quantum version in 2017)

Web based IRC
IRC uses a TCP/IP port which is often blocked in environments with strictly managed internet access. In these environments it is still possible to use http based clients such as:


 * http://webchat.freenode.net/
 * https://kiwiirc.com/client/irc.freenode.net
 * http://irc.telascience.org/ - NOT AVAILABLE
 * http://www.mibbit.com/ - BLOCKED BY FREENODE

Matrix bridges
Many IRC channels are also bridged to Matrix rooms

IRC ops may find the following document useful to make life easier for Matrix users: https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-appservice-irc/wiki/End-user-FAQ#i-am-a-chanop-and-have-a-spam-problem-how-can-i-fix-it-without-affecting-matrix-users

Channels
The primary OSGeo channel is #osgeo on the irc.freenode.net network. Generally speaking you would connect to irc.freenode.net and then issue the "/join #osgeo" command or possibly follow the irc://irc.freenode.net/osgeo URL.

Other channels of interest:

Infrastructure

 * #osgeo-sac - OSGeo system administrator committee

Projects

 * #drupal-geo - Drupal GEO
 * #fdo - Feature Data Objects
 * #featureserver - FeatureServer
 * #gdal - GDAL/OGR project (as well as FWTools, PROJ.4)
 * #geomoose - GeoMOOSE
 * #geonetwork - Geonetwork Open Source
 * #geotools - GeoTools (also to some extent GeoServer, uDig)
 * #grass - GRASS GIS
 * #mapbender - Mapbender
 * #mapguide - MapGuide Open Source (and Enterprise)
 * #mapserver - MapServer and some MapServer based frameworks
 * #openlayers - OpenLayers
 * #osgeolive - Live GIS Disc
 * #ossimplanet - OSSIM project
 * #postgis - PostGIS
 * #osgeo-geos - GEOS
 * #pycsw - pycsw
 * #qgis - QGIS
 * #zoo-project - ZOO-Project

Local Chapters

 * #osgeo-es - Capítulo Local de la comunidad hispano-hablante
 * #cugos - Cascadia Users of Geospatial Open Source
 * #osgeo-europe - Europe OSGeo Chapter
 * #fossgis - German language OSGeo chapter (logs)
 * #osgeo-fr - Francophone OSGeo Chapter
 * #osgeo-it (former #gfoss) - Italian language OSGeo Chapter
 * #osgeo-phl - Philadelphia area OSGeo Chapter
 * #osgeo-pdx Portland Chapter
 * #osgeo-pt - Portugal OSGeo Chapter (use webchat se não tiver um cliente IRC, e preencha o nome e o canal #osgeo-pt)
 * #osgeo-qc - Quebec OSGeo Chapter
 * #osgeo-ro - Romanian OSGeo Chapter
 * #geoinquietos - Spanish OSGeo micro chapters

Initiatives

 * #osgeo-gci Google Code-In (GCI) discussions (connect through Webchat)
 * #osgeo-gsoc Summer of Code (GSoC) discussions (connect through Webchat)

Events

 * #foss4g - FOSS4G conference organization & discussions
 * #tosprint OSGeo Code Sprint

Other

 * #geojson
 * #kml
 * #moss4g

NickServ
Due to spam the FreeNode channels now require you to identify a nickname with the "NickServ" bot before you are able to post any messages.


 * https://freenode.net/kb/answer/registration

Etiquette

 * Don't ask to ask, just go ahead and ask your question.
 * Don't paste large chunks of text into IRC channels. If you want to present a code or configuration file snippet to others to look at use a "pasting service" like http://codepad.org/ or http://osgeo.pastebin.com/ to host the snippet, and then paste the url to it into the IRC channel.
 * If you want the attention of a particular person, include their nick in the message and they will generally be alerted (flashed, bell rung, etc).
 * Give folks a while to respond. They are usually multi-tasking and might not look at IRC for a while.
 * If an active conversation is going on, wait for a lull to raise a different topic (a minute of inactivity for instance)

Logs
Many popular OSGeo related channels are logged. The #osgeo channel logs are at:

http://irclogs.geoapt.com/osgeo

Other logs may also be found under:

http://irclogs.geoapt.com/

Some channels (ie. #mapserver and #osgeo) are also logged on IRSeek (http://www.irseek.com), an IRC search engine.

Administration and Ops
The "osgeo" group on freenode now has Mateusz, Angelos, jmckenna, and strk as primary contacts and co-founder of all of the currently registered channels [1 ]:

#osgeo #osgeo-commits #osgeo-fr #osgeo-gr #osgeo-gsoc #osgeo-it #osgeo-kansai #osgeo-ro #osgeo-sac #osgeo-uk