We are broadly speaking two things:

- An open source group practicing the concept of Cross-Project Community Development.

- A social circle of scifi fans sharing love of a genre and friendship.

The theory of cross-project community development is a very simple one. Consider these premises:

- Many developers work better when they're part of a group.

It's not true for everyone, but it's true for us. Runners put down more miles when they're part of a pack. Students keep their noses in books longer when they're part of a good study group.

- Many open source projects - in fact, a hypermajority - are maintained by individuals or tiny groups of developers.

When one is part of a tribe with a single member, there is no one toward whom one can turn to share a moment of triumph or frustration. Problems must be solved with a single mind. Burdens are lifted with only one pair of shoulders.

For a great many open source developers, these two facts are in conflict.

Our solution is to invite developers, regardless of the nature of their projects, to come together under a single roof; a cross-project community. We are a place with a wealth of varying expertise and interests encompassing most popular programming languages, aviation science, education, electrical engineering, radio, manufacturing, computer networking, small businesses, and poultry. To name a few things. We're a good place to lift your head up from a text editor and ask a question.

We're like an author's writing group... for open source.

But there also comes a time at the end of the day when you need to put down the soldering iron

...and we're also good company. Well mostly. We're scifi fans. This is also a place where you can share your enthusiasm for the short story that caught your imagination in the new issue of Asimov's or groan about the disaster of a script in the last episode of Discovery.

We offer a rich calendar of events. We have our own silly holidays. We've figured out how to hold a karaoke night with just IRC and a web browser. We sometimes dine and drink together. We have our own podcast. Watching movies and television shows together is a cherished tradition. We have about two decades of in-jokes. And we'd love to let you in on a few of them.