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These boards are intended for newcomers to the open source languages, and also for the "typical user" who writes or maintains PHP, Perl, MySQL, Python, Tcl/Tk, Ruby or Java as just a part of his/her job. If you're a "geek", we would be delighted if you read the posts and answer enquiries, but please support our efforts to make this a straighforward, friendly and non-intimidating board.

Help on the use of this board is available in the following categories:
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Opentalk is run using the open source "YaBB" (Yet Another Bulletin Board) application. Although we're perfectly capable of writing and maintaining our own board, we strongly support the sharing ethos of the open source world, and it wouldn't be the best use of our resources to "re-invent the wheel". It's robust, reliable, flexible, and offers the facilities and security that we want to offer you here. It so happens that it's written in Perl, but that doesn't affect the user; it could equally be written using PHP, Tcl or any other language that's available on our server. YaBB is getting rather old-in-the-tooth these days, though, and we may be switching to other software such as SMF in the future, which we already use with great effect on sites we sponsor such as our First Great Western Customer Site.