Communication channels
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Contents |
Introduction
Similar to many other open source projects, Openbravo has a set of communication channels to cover different participants and community needs.
The recommended usage of these channels are as follow:
- Weblogs and Planet: To communicate with the Openbravo community, other communities, and journalists regarding progress made with in Openbravo projects.
- Mailing lists: For coordinating Openbravo development. Useful to stay updated with the latest news in Openbravo development.
- Chat channels: For real time communication, short questions, coordination (like our Chat meetings) and to quickly communicate with Openbravo community.
These channels are maintained by Openbravo and a community of volunteers. Do not expect commercial support when you ask for help. If you can contribute your experience, please do not hesitate to do it. Even if an answer is incomplete, it's a start.
General recommendations for written communication
These are some general recommendations for written communication:
- Is it appropriate for your audience?
- Do you provide enough context and information (e.g. product version, OS, etc)?
- What do you want to communicate?
- Structure your writing.
- Try to find sources and data (links) that defend your points.
- Avoid unnecessary criticism.
- Keep in mind: Some journalists may quote you as a project source!
Openbravo issues
Openbravo issues is a database of bugs and feature requests for Openbravo projects. It helps developers keep track of issues and who is fixing them.
If you have found a bug or you want to request a feature enhancement a issue report is the way to bring the attention to the Openbravo community.
Openbravo weblogs and Planet
Planet Openbravo is a window into the world, work and lives of Openbravo developers and contributors that acts as a aggregator of the different personal weblogs of every individuals.
Blogging recommendations
What to blog about
- Conferences, tradeshows, round tables where Openbravo ERP and POS projects are involved
- Architecture decisions
- Product features that we are developing
- Success Openbravo stories
- Open source business
- Interesting Openbravo review articles
- If your blog mixes personal and Openbravo-related posts, use tags and have a feed showing only the Openbravo-related posts aggregated on the planet
- Openbravo-staff making both personal and professional posts that are Openbravo-related should maintain separate blogs for these to avoid confusion
Rules when blogging at Openbravo
- Use English
- Your public is smart and informed
- Think of what you want to say before writing it
- Structure your writing
- Be aware of intellectual property issues
- Link your sources
- Recognize people that have helped to build your ideas
- There is no such thing as hiding in the Internet
Mailing lists
Openbravo ERP project current has some mailing lists at SourceForge to coordinate the project development efforts.
openbravo-development
URL: http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?forum_name=openbravo-development
Traffic: Expected to be high
This a general development discussion list about how to develop using Openbravo.
Archives
Openbravo mailing list archives are collected on SourceForge.
The following sites also host archives of the mailing lists:
Recommendations
- Before answering a question check if it is explained in Openbravo community Wiki and instead of giving a full explanation give the user the URL that points to documentation that answers his or her question. This includes pointing users to our public roadmap when they ask about future development plans or release dates.
- Get to the point quickly. In your subject and in the first paragraph, clearly describe what problem you are having. Don't use "Help me!" as your subject.
- Don't create multiple topics for the same question. This makes it harder for people to find the solution as only one topic may be answered. Posting the same questions to multiple places is called 'Cross Posting' and is also not going to help.
- Give all the details. After describing the problem, describe what version you're running and what module or page you are having a problem with. If relevant, describe what platform or database you're using, and paste detailed error log messages. If you have screen shots, post them on issue trackers or upload them to your site and provide a link.
- Before answering a question check if it is answered in our public FAQ. If it is, give the FAQ URL to the user pointing where the answer is instead of answering the question.
- After answering a question, if you think that it can be turned into a general question, consider taking some time and adding the question and its answer to our public FAQ.
- Quite often people describe behaviours of the application that are clearly bugs. Ask the user to file a bug with all the details that they can provide. If the user does not file a bug report, consider doing it yourself.
- If you detect a spam message or a highly offensive message contact Openbravo administrators (email address wiki at openbravo.com)
Openbravo IRC channels
Internet Relay Chat, or IRC, is the precursor to instant messaging and chat rooms like those found on Yahoo! and innumerable other web sites. It is one of the best ways to get help fast but it is also a way to hang out and become part of the Openbravo community.
As many other open source projects, Openbravo has its own discussion channel that allows real time communication between the different community members where they can exchange quickly ideas, doubts and projects.
- English language channel
- Server: irc.freenode.net
- Channel name: #openbravo
- Spanish language channel
- Server: irc.freenode.net
- Channel name: #openbravo-es
Software
There are many open source clients. These are some of the most popular ones, available for Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux and *BSD:
Joining #openbravo via browser
If you're unable to use the IRC clients listed above you can join #openbravo using the Webchat @ Freenode
- Nickname: enter a nickname
- Channel(s): #openbravo or #openbravo-es (spanish one)
Registering nicks
Freenode allows users to register their nicks in order to keep them between sessions and avoid vandalism.
To register your nick send a message with your password to the nick server.
/msg NickServ REGISTER Password
Once the nick is registered you should identify to the nick server every time that you connect using the following command:
/msg NickServ IDENTIFY Password
Note that due to recent Freenode's spam policies, only registered users can send private messages to other users. In case you want to get messages from unregistered users, type the following command:
/msg NickServ SET UNFILTERED ON
Netiquette
Although IRC is mostly unrestricted, there are certain rules/etiquette everyone must follow:
- English is the most widely understood language on IRC. If you wish to speak to friends in a different language, you may create a separate channel and put a language restriction in your topic.
- Search before you ask. In many cases, your questions have already been answered before. Places to search include the Wiki and Google.
- Stay on topic. Even if you see other people being off topic, this does not mean that you should be.
- Always be friendly. Don't pick fights or arguments and antagonize other users.
- Be patient. If nobody is answering your question, it may be because nobody is around to read it, or nobody present knows the answer.
- Don't ask to ask, just ask. Ask your stuff, don't ask if we're "alive" nor "anyone using XYZ"!
- THIS IS SHOUTING ON IRC SO AVOID TYPING ALL CAPS.
- Never flood the channel sending large amounts of information. Use a free service such as pastebin and just post a link to it.
- Use a charset everyone can read: UTF-8.
Note of gratitude
Openbravo wants to thank the people behind irc.freenode.net for providing the infrastructure for supporting our channel.