Replicant

h1. CommunityAndContact

The Replicant community has several places where people interact together.

h2. Mailing list

Most Replicant developers are on the mailing list, as it is also used to review patches. Many non-developers that are contributors or that don't contribute to Replicant are also on the mailing list.

It's being used for many things:

* Ask questions about Replicant, discuss about issues, etc.

* Discuss about Replicant in general.

* Discuss about Replicant contributions and development

* Review patches

The volume is moderate but there are sometimes spikes due to the to a huge patch set being sent.

To register you can use the "Mailman interface":https://lists.osuosl.org/mailman/listinfo/replicant . That interface also has a non-searchable archive of the list.

Alternatively, there is also a "searchable archive":https://www.mail-archive.com/replicant@osuosl.org of this list.

h2. Forums

The "Replicant forums":https://redmine.replicant.us/projects/replicant/boards are used for similar things than the mailing list, however:

* Patches are not reviewed on the forums

* Less developers tend to be active on the forums

h2. IRC

IRC stands for "Internet Relay Chat":https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Relay_Chat/. Most Replicant developers and contributors, as well as people who are interested in our project, are present on the Replicant IRC Channel(s).

People from other communities are also there as we collaborate on various things, like adding support for devices in Upstream Linux.

In practice Replicant has three IRC channels, but it looks like there is only one since they are all bridged together. Bridged means that a user can join only one of the channels and send and receive messages with users on all the other channels because all messages are forwarded across every channel.

Our three IRC Channels are:

* #replicant on "Freenode":https://freenode.net/

* #replicant on "OFTC":https://oftc.net/

* #replicant on "hackint":https://hackint.org

Replicant does not want to discriminate against "Tor":https://torproject.org/ users and has taken a number of steps in order to ensure that "Tor":https://torproject.org/ users can engage with ous on IRC.

To connect and engage with our Freenode IRC Channel via "Tor":https://torproject.org/, users need to use the "SASL":https://freenode.net/kb/answer/sasl (Simple Authentication and Security Layer) framework for authentication every time they connect and should be aware of another couple of restrictions outlined "here":https://freenode.net/news/tor-online/.

Additionally, Freenode requires all new accounts to be created over the "clearnet":https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clearnet_(networking). Since internet services routinely identify users by their IP address, we don't recommend that users who are trying to preserve their anonymity and/or utilize the encryption protections provided by the "Tor network":https://torproject.org/ to create a Freenode account.

Even though the Freenode IRC channel was our first IRC channel, we decided that their policies towards Tor don't meet all of our users' anonymity needs so we created an IRC channel on "OFTC":https://oftc.net/. As they clearly state "here":https://www.oftc.net/Tor/, "OFTC":https://oftc.net/ "does not require users to first connect in the clear and register with services to allow connecting via Tor". However, "OFTC":https://oftc.net/ doesn't have an officially supported "Tor onion services":https://support.torproject.org/onionservices/, which is a feature that a number of our users wanted to be able to utilize.

This lead us to create an IRC channel on HackInt because it provides the additional anonymity features of allowing anonymous connections via "Tor onion services":https://support.torproject.org/onionservices/ and allowing users to register accounts via "Hashcash":https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashcash instead of "CAPTCHA":https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAPTCHA as explained "here":https://hackint.org/transport/tor/.

h2. Matrix room

There is a Matrix room which is bridged to all three of our IRC channels. 

Our Matrix room is:

* "#freenode_#replicant:matrix.org":https://app.element.io/#/room/#freenode_#replicant:matrix.org 

The room was first created in 2015 through a partnership between Freenode and Matrix.org, which you can read about in this "blog post":https://www.matrix.org/blog/2015/06/22/the-matrix-org-irc-bridge-now-bridges-all-of-freenode/.

A "Matrix client":https://matrix.org/clients/ is needed in order to connect to Replicant's Matrix room. 

Please note that while Replicant's Matrix room name above, when clicked, links to "Matrix.org's":https://Matrix.org/ hosted instance of the "Element web client":https://github.com/vector-im/element-web/, it does not mean that the Replicant project endorses this Matrix client or Matrix server host above any other Matrix client or Matrix server host.

h2. XMPP Multi-User Chat

There is an XMPP MUC which is bridged to all three of our IRC channels. 

Our XMPP MUC is:

* "#replicant%irc.freenode.net@irc.disroot.org":https://nl.movim.eu/?chat/%23replicant%25irc.freenode.net%40irc.disroot.org/room

Please note that while Replicant's XMPP MUC rooom name above, when clicked, links to Movim is a social and chat platform that act as a web frontend for the XMPP protocol.

h2. Private contact address

We also have a private contact address for the project, for inquiries that are private / confidential. 

Very few people receive that list, and the ones that do tend to be very busy. So if your question can be answered on the "mailing list":https://lists.osuosl.org/mailman/listinfo/replicant, please use the mailing list. Unless you are writing about an explicitly private matter, we will likely advise you to write to the mailing list as we want to respond publicly when answering inquires as often as possible. We also won't forward your mail to the mailing list ourselves as otherwise we could mistakenly publish information that you wanted to keep private. See the [[PrivateContact]] page for use case and on how to use such contact address.

If you didn't manage to register to the mailing list, or if it doesn't work for you for some reasons, it's still possible to send a mail to the mailing list address without being registered. In that case we will be notified about it and we will be able to make it go through by manually going to the mailing list interface.