Community

Chimera Linux is a free software project. If you wish to participate, there are several ways you can do so.

Communication channels

Our primary means of communication is IRC. The primary and currently only IRC channel is #chimera-linux on the OFTC network.

You can find OFTC here. You can use any IRC client compatible with the network, as well as their web chat. It is highly encouraged to idle in the channel (by e.g. using a bouncer) rather than re-connecting, especially if you have questions, as it may take a while to get answers (people do not always monitor their chats).

The secondary channel is on Matrix, at #chimera-linux:matrix.org. The channels are linked, so you can use whichever you prefer. Messages are relayed between them transparently.

We ask you to refrain from using advanced Matrix features, such as reactions, editing, message removal, markup and multi-line messages while using the chat. This is because users on IRC side will either not see that or it will clutter the channel. Stick to simple, plain text messages, like you would if you were on IRC.

Neither channel is logged by the project. Keep in mind that other users might be keeping their own logs though.

Other public spaces

These are official:

Unless listed here, anything else is an unofficial space. Creation of such spaces is discouraged by the project. Please do not create them.

More official spaces may be introduced with time, depending on demand and viability of the platform. However, such spaces will always be created and managed by the core team; please do not create them by yourself.

Contributing

We are always looking for contributors. Anyone can contribute, regardless of their experience level. Examples of contributing include:

If you wish to contribute technical work, you should first pick the part of the project you want to contribute into (each has their repository) and read its documentation. If you need help, you can always ask in one of the official channels. See the Development page for more.

Team

Several people have project owner status, which means they have access to every repository and possibly other infrastructure. These currently are:

Committers have access to specific repositories, typically cports, and possibly other infrastrucure on as needed basis. These are:

Several community members have moderation rights on IRC. Project owners and committers universally do. Non-committers include:

Contributors without special access may be found in the individual repositories. New committers may be invited from the community, and this is decided on individual basis by the project owners. Likewise, committers may become project owners if decided by the core team.

Conduct

Chimera is informally organized. In places where that makes sense, notably the realtime chat channels, there is no emphasis on keeping things on-topic. A fun and casual environment is better than a boring one, and most topics are okay. After all, a lot of people do not participate in FOSS strictly for the technical efforts, but also to have a comfortable community space where they can interact with like-minded people.

This should not be interpreted as a permission to behave in a toxic manner. It is not just you, and therefore it is extremely important to keep standards high.

If a conflict happens, or if you have any kind of concern, don’t be afraid to raise it - things cannot be fixed if nobody knows anything is wrong, and bottled up conflicts are bad for the community as a whole. If you for some reason cannot do that in public, contacting anybody with moderator rights in private is alright too.

Notably, unwarranted personal attacks or any kind of harassment for any reason are not tolerated. Additionally, participants are fully expected to observe the same level of standards both in and outside of the project spaces, especially if they are contributors or otherwise active. Harmful views that negatively affect any (and particularly those that are marginalized in some way) group of people (this does not include those intentionally causing harm themselves) are not welcome in the project, and keeping good conduct within the project alone is simply not enough.

Overtly malicious behavior is usually clear, but in other cases there may be some doubt. When that happens, it is usually better to assume good intentions by default, especially in a project that has members all over the world and language barrier may create ambiguous situations. Clearing things up before an intervention is necessary is always better than unnecessary conflict.

All violations will be handled based on their severity by anybody in power who is available, and may range from a warning to an expulsion. If you feel you have been wronged, you can appeal to anybody with global access rights, and your case will be re-evaluated.

Specific examples of things considered harmful and not welcome: