IRC stands for ''Internet Relay Chat'' and is one of the primary means of synchronous communication between people working on an open source project. It's a text-based chat system where clients connect to one or more servers, and the servers relay messages between themselves (hence the name). Communication is done in ''channels'' which individual users join, and users are identified by ''nicks'' (nicknames). In addition to human users, various ''services'' and ''bots'' (robots -- programs) are present in many channels.

==Resources==

* [http://benjamin.smedbergs.us/blog/2008-08-26/irc-communication/ Discussion] of some common DOs and Don'ts with respect to Mozilla's IRC culture (also useful for other projects).

* [http://www.jonhs.com/acronym_dictionary.htm Dictionary of common IRC abbreviations]

* [http://www.clubmoz.ca/node/2#note1 IRC Tutorial]