Communication channels

The primary OLPC communication channels are mailing lists, IRC channels, and discussion forums.

Forums

There are a number of active OLPC forums, including

• http://forum.laptop.org/

total posts 6.887 • Total topics 1.324 • Total members 1.609 _{Yamaplos 22:56, 20 April 2008 (EDT)}

• http://olpcnews.com/forum/

total posts 20.765 • Total topics 2.332 • Total members 2.754 _{Yamaplos 22:56, 20 April 2008 (EDT)}

Blogs

Planet OLPC aggregates a number of popular blogs on OLPC topics. See blogs for a list of these blogs and instructions on adding more blogs to this feed.

OLPC News publishes opinion pieces from the most diverse sources, mostly OLPC volunteers, sometimes OLPC employees, and the general public. The "comments" section for every article opens debate and diversity of opinion, including celebration and criticism of official OLPC decisions.
Editors: originally Wayan Vota, now Bryan Berry and Christoph Derndorfer.
_{full disclosure: I am currently the editor for Latinamerica there Yamaplos 20:23, 6 July 2008 (UTC)}

Chat

Most OLPC chat takes place on IRC (that's Internet Relay Chat). See also the older IRC page. You can either use a computer based client to log in to IRC (like XOirc on the XO) or a web interface like the one at our forum.

IRC

IRC is mainly designed for group communication in discussion 'channels', but allows for personal chat and data transfer as well.

The OLPC Community uses a series of channels in the irc.freenode.net and irc.oftc.net networks. Check {{User irc}} to see how to register your participation in the IRC channels within the wiki, and to find the category where users are registered.

irc.freenode.net channels

General:
#olpc-help	Community help. If you need help using your XO, and you haven't asked anywhere else: try here first.
#olpc-ayuda	The Spanish language (Español) version of #olpc-help.
#olpc	Contact point for all things olpc, and the core hardware development team's own channel. Picture a room where the knowledgeable core people are hard at work. It is a good place for authoritative answers, but people may be out, or too busy to respond, or don't want interruptions at the moment. Consider going to #olpc-help first.
#olpc-content	content related matters and general discussion.
#olpc-meeting	OLPC meeting, developer's meeting room
#sugar	Sugar development.
Primary Community Channels
#olpc-groups	Global channel for all local communities (no language barriers)
#olpc-health	Global channel for all health-related communities (English)
Secondary Community Channels
#olpc-es	Spanish language channel
#olpc-brasil	Portuguese language channel
#olpc-europe	Regional discussions for Europe

irc.oftc.net channels

Developer:
#olpc-devel	Primary home of Developers conversation in IRC
#fedora-olpc	The home of the Fedora interest group for OLPC
#schoolserver	Development of the XS School server
Community:
#olpc-admin	Home of the Volunteer sys-admin squad: Infrastructure gang

other channels

How to use irc channels

1. For the #olpc-help channel you can visit the Live Web Chat.

1. Another web-based chat for all channels is mibbit, with nickname: (whatever you like), server: irc.freenode.net, and channel: #olpc-help (or whatever other channel you're trying to get into).
2. Some helpful resources are here, and this tutorial, which also includes basic commands.
3. Learn about IRC etiquette. Try here, here, or here.
   • For IRC on your XO, install the latest XoIRC activity.
4. Connect to one of the above channels, and say hello. (To do this, choose irc.freenode.net as your server, and then /join a channel... if you're new to IRC, the #olpc-help channel is probably the place you want to go first).
5. Note OLPC growing pains.

Mailing lists

see also Community mailing lists

The full list of mailing lists is at http://lists.laptop.org. Sometimes they multiply when one isn't watching.

Lists can be searched with google.

There are also many other mailing lists on topics related to the OLPC project.

Starting a list

The best way to start a new mailing list is to begin a discussion on a related list that already exists, and once the discussion becomes active, to ask for a separate list for that topic or that sort of traffic.

When you have a critical mass of people regularly talking about the same topic, request a mailing list by emailing the following information to sysadmin at laptop dot org:

1. The name you want for your mailing list, with alternative names if the first one is taken
2. A description of the list, its purpose, and why it's needed (being able to say "we've been talking on this other list for a while, and the discussion has grown too big - see these archive links" is helpful)
3. The name/email of the list admin, and of at least one other moderator (minimum one admin and one moderator)
4. At least 10 names/emails of people who want to be the initial subscribers

It may take a while (usually several days) to hear a response back, so please be patient!

Public lists

This page has a more up-to-date location: http://lists.laptop.org

This collection of mailing lists almost certainly out-of-date by the time you read this. For a complete listing go to http://lists.laptop.org.

General announcements Community-news Weekly community news Devel-machines OLPC Developer Machine mailing list (for people with development machines) General discussion Olpc-open General OLPC community discussion and chit-chat Grassroots A mailing list connecting all the local communities Research Research related to OLPC Country discussions Argentina [no description available] Brasil OLPC in Brasil Egypt-opensource Discussion of open source in Egypt India OLPC in India Nepal OLPC in Nepal Nigeria-opensource Discussion of open source in Nigeria Peru [no description available] Switzerland OLPC Switzerland Accessibility and other end-use issues Accessibility Issues around policy: especially privacy, security, and information-flow (as of Jan. '08, appears only to be a spam-infested swamp)

Software and content development Devel Software development mailing list Sugar Discussion of OLPC design, desktop platform and user experience GSoC Google Summer of Code mailing list Etoys Discussion of the Etoys multi-media authoring environment on OLPC Games Games for the OLPC Library OLPC content discussions Health OLPC Health project mailing list Localization Localization the OLPC project Hardware and other tech discussions Security OLPC Security Discussion linux-mm-cc Compressed Caching for Linux Networking Networking the OLPC world Server devel School Server development mailing list Technical announcements Bugs OLPC bugtracker mail Commits-kernel Commits list for OLPC kernel; (rumoured to exist. deprecated?) Devel-boards OLPC Developer Machine mailing list (deprecated) Hardware-announce (rumoured to exist, deprecated.)

List subscribers

The subscribers for many lists with non-private rosters can be viewed by visiting this web address, http://lists.laptop.org/mailman/roster/<listname>. (Community-news and Devel, at least, have private rosters.) One must first have joined a list and signed in at the http://lists.laptop.org/options/<listname> address. (The "Visit Subscriber List" button on the listinfo page (http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/<listname>) does not currently work.)