ASK-Solutions

Before the foundation had a name

Before the joint projects and later the foundation took shape, the people involved had each already developed their own experiences, interests and convictions. Family and community, religion and philosophy, literature and culture, education, social engagement, science, technology and practical work all played a role in different combinations.

The different experiences and views of those involved brought together varied perspectives on knowledge, freedom, responsibility, faith, society, learning and agency. In conversations, those perspectives were compared, questioned and developed further. Practical situations repeatedly provided new circumstances in which such questions could not only be discussed, but also experienced, investigated and reassessed.

Technology formed an important practical field within this. Long before the legal foundation was established, several people who would later become involved were already working with software, hardware, electronics, model aircraft, simulation, web publishing, repair, communication systems, reverse engineering, free software, hacker ethics, demoscene culture, BBS systems, FidoNet and the early internet. This technical history was also connected with broader interests and experiences around learning, community, culture and independence.

Differences between those involved could be seen, among other things, in their experiences of education and upbringing. Laura had experience of free education, with a learning environment that gave substantial room to personal development, individual interests and different ways of learning. Hüseyin had followed mainstream education, while at home he too was given considerable freedom and support to develop his own interests. This could be seen, for example, in his interest in model aircraft, computers, laptops and technical gadgets. At the same time, their family histories, cultural environments and upbringing gave them different experiences of authority, responsibility, family relationships and the ways in which rules and norms are interpreted.

Martin also brought a clearly distinct perspective. His academic background was accompanied by a strong interest in alternative music and culture. Laura came from other parts of the same broader cultural environment, with more emphasis on literature, performance, visual art and the networks around them. Their backgrounds therefore overlapped only partly, but they had enough shared references to connect quickly. The differences within that shared cultural terrain provided considerable material for further discussion about art, subculture, sexuality, social norms and individual freedom.

Those differences led to long and sometimes forceful discussions about family, norms and values, nature versus nurture, the position of men and women, homosexuality and intersex, and the extent to which human behaviour can be regarded as natural, learned or culturally determined. Upbringing and law also came up regularly: differences between punishment and encouragement, how countries and cultures deal with authority, historical differences between Christian and Islamic legal practices, and the wider religious and political history in which such views had arisen, including the Crusades. Such conversations showed that questions of freedom, responsibility and agency extended far beyond technology and could take very different forms depending on historical, cultural and personal context.

In technology, this became particularly concrete when knowledge was actively closed off, for example through proprietary software and hardware, closed file formats, technical restrictions, intellectual-property claims or components supplied only as opaque binary components. A user might still be able to use a system while understanding, investigating, modifying, repairing or sharing it further became increasingly difficult.

This also marked an important difference between the free-software thinking that mattered within the early group and some commercial approaches to open source. Within such an open-source approach it could be considered practically acceptable to make part of the source code available while supplying other parts as proprietary binary blobs in order to shield knowledge or intellectual property. From the perspective of free software, such a component remained outside the freedom at the centre of the idea: anyone who cannot study, modify and share the software being used has no real control over that part of the system.

Free software and later free hardware were therefore concrete fields in which already existing questions about knowledge, power, dependence, freedom and responsibility became particularly visible, and in which different people involved could test and discuss their views.

Haarlem-Overveen: different strands come together

In the late 1990s, an unusual practical environment developed around the Aviation Technology department of Hogeschool Haarlem. It was an educational environment with offices, workshops, laboratories, storage areas, simulator projects, technical collections and people moving between departments. The workshop and the Sipke Wynia student association were located by a side entrance at the far left rear of the building, directly beside the Sipke Wynia bar and close to the aircraft collection.

That side of the building looked out over the railway line between Zandvoort and Haarlem, the site of the former naval hospital and a car park. The path alongside the railway was used by students, staff, lecturers, local residents and visitors as a practical shortcut between the station, the school, nearby streets and the surrounding neighbourhoods. The adjacent HEAO building was also immediately nearby from the same side entrance. In practice, this made the area around the workshop and aircraft collection much more open than an ordinary corridor with classrooms or offices.

Laura, later one of the founders and still involved in the board, brought a background in which religion and philosophy, literature and culture, social engagement, science, education and technology had long existed alongside and through one another. Formal education, independent study, work and practical projects regularly overlapped.

In Overveen, Laura worked on software, hardware, testing systems and automation, among other things. One important early task was rebuilding a digital student testing system from the ground up: designing small student terminals with keyboards and displays, hardware interfacing, and software on the teacher's computer. Other work included measurement and test equipment, educational hardware, custom electronics and reusable software.

Because the work took place beside visible routes through the school, shared spaces, the bar, the aircraft collection and the side entrance, technical work did not disappear behind a finished product. People could see terminals, cockpit components, test equipment, drawings, cables, tools and half-finished solutions. That visibility gave people a reason to stop, look and ask what something was, why it worked, why it did not work, or how it could be repaired.

During the first weeks, conversations began with people who would later become important to the foundation. Hüseyin, then an Aviation Technology student, became involved early on. He had grown up with strong support from his parents and a community in Almelo and became active in community work in Haarlem. Religion, culture, history and science also interested him; travel, library visits and independent study, including work relating to Turkey and Iran, deepened those interests further.

Within the group, that background became meaningful in conversations and discussions about education, faith, history, society, responsibility, knowledge and the ways different cultures and institutions deal with them. Together with the other varied backgrounds of those involved, it contributed to a further deepening of the questions and ideas they shared.

Piet de Wit, an engineer with a background at Hoogovens, and Olaf van Bockel, a former pilot and flight test engineer, were meanwhile working on the F.28 simulator project and needed help with its computer and automation side. Piet would also become important in securing practical space and in thinking about a more independent organisational and legal basis for the work.

Robert also became closely involved with the group. Around Robert there was a social background that did not originate in the technical projects. Robert and Jolanda had known each other since childhood and had strong ties to the close-knit community life of Friesland, where associations, education, practical mutual assistance and involvement in the local environment were closely connected.

After completing her teacher-training degree, Jolanda had experience during this period in education for children with severe learning difficulties. Alongside her daily work, she was also involved in practical matters concerning the children's living and learning environment, including plans and fundraising for school facilities. She held no formal role within the foundation, but through Robert and the group's informal contacts, her experiences in working with children, education and support formed part of conversations and joint activities. She later also volunteered with Stichting Witte Tulp. The community-oriented involvement Robert and Jolanda knew from Friesland remained recognisable in their local activities after they later returned there.

The significance of Overveen therefore extended beyond the individual technical projects. Around the visible work, several pre-existing experiences and ways of working gained a shared practical setting. People could walk in, ask questions, try something themselves, share knowledge and work on the same concrete problem from different backgrounds. Important characteristics of the shareable work model that would later be described explicitly thus acquired a recognisable collective form before the foundation existed as a legal entity.

The aircraft collection itself was an important attraction, especially during open days and special events. The collection contained aircraft material with stories attached to it, such as the Fokker Spin associated with the early flight over Haarlem and a Sikorsky helicopter linked to Olaf's own experience as a flight test engineer. These were not abstract teaching aids. They were physical objects with history, technical questions and human stories, and they made the surrounding technical work more accessible.

People came in through ordinary routes. Students from the neighbouring HEAO, students from other departments, technicians, lecturers, classmates, visitors and people who already knew someone there found their way into the space. Local children entered a visible school and workshop atmosphere where adults were present, doors stood open and aircraft components, tools and explanations made the place lively. They asked questions, watched what was happening and sometimes made simple drawings of the space and the people they met there, which they gave back as small signs of enthusiasm and appreciation.

What mattered was the possibility of bringing different forms of knowledge together in a shared environment. Someone could point to a cockpit component, a terminal, a cable, a piece of code or a broken device and explain what it did. Someone else brought experience from education, community, culture or another field. Technology, education, encounter, discussion and knowledge sharing therefore became parts of the same everyday environment.

Overveen thus became one of the first environments in which different strands came together and the practical approach acquired a recognisable, collectively supported form.

Later, a dedicated room became available next to the simulator space, opposite the working environment in which much of this practice had developed. Piet de Wit played an important role in obtaining it. Following discussions with the head of department and school management, one of the available rooms could be used for the project. The room received its own lock cylinders, so that people given access to the project did not automatically gain access to classrooms, laboratories, staff rooms and other parts of the school.

The people involved fitted out the room themselves and it was then kept open daily by a team of students and volunteers, including Piet de Wit, Laura, Robert, Martin, Vincent and Cedric. This created a place where people could walk in during the day, work on something, ask a question or become involved in someone else's work.

Students from various programmes came by, including Electrical Engineering with computer science and electronics, Naval Architecture, Mechanical Engineering and Aviation Technology, as well as HEAO students. Local residents, friends, family and acquaintances also came in. Students used the space for assignments and technical projects from their courses when they preferred to work there rather than at home or in an open laboratory classroom. In addition, people worked on their own self-devised projects arising from personal interests or hobbies, as well as repairs and practical technical problems they brought with them.

Work included computers, self-built loudspeakers, household appliances and custom constructions, including a home-built portable computer assembled from an attaché case, motherboard, flat-panel display and power supply. Unusual projects could also come in, such as the restoration of the Bakfietsband's large cargo and stage bicycle.

That everyday mixture of people, disciplines and kinds of work made clear how broad the practice was. Knowledge came in from different directions and was passed on in the context of real work. The combination of visible practical work, walk-in access, trying things yourself, explanation and exchanging knowledge took on a form that could also exist outside the original project space.

The first physical implementation of what would later be described as the shareable work model therefore already existed before the formal establishment of the foundation.

The need for an independent foundation becomes concrete

The practice in Overveen made particularly concrete what became possible when people with different backgrounds were given space to work together and make knowledge visible and accessible. A student who had lost motivation could become interested again by helping with a real problem. A child who had only come to look could leave with a drawing or a new question. Someone from another field could understand a difficult concept because it was explained through a cockpit, a circuit, a measurement or a broken component.

At the same time, it became clear how vulnerable such an environment was when it remained entirely dependent on the space, resources and permission of another institution. Piet de Wit was among those who strongly emphasised the need for a lasting organisational and legal identity of its own. Robert, Adriaan and others also encouraged finding a more independent form for the growing work.

The question therefore became organisational as well as practical. A project could disappear when an institution changed its priorities. Equipment, documentation, designs and established relationships could become dispersed. An independent organisation could enter into agreements in its own right, manage resources, apply for funds or grants, carry responsibility and provide continuity for work that did not naturally fit within any one existing institution.

The early group included people with different views on knowledge, freedom, responsibility and the relationship between the individual and the organisation. This sometimes led to forceful discussions about free software and the then increasingly popular commercial framing of “open source”, but also about education, faith, culture, history, community and social responsibility.

Free software provided a particularly concrete field in which such broader questions could be tested. The discussion was not only about licences or source code, but about actual agency: what does freedom mean when essential components remain closed, access depends on another organisation, or someone is formally allowed to use something but in practice has little ability to continue independently? Such discussions sharpened existing views and helped the group formulate questions around knowledge sharing, collaboration, dependence and independence with increasing precision.

A changing educational environment and the need for continuity

While the need for an independent foundation was becoming more concrete, the educational environment in which an important part of the early joint work took place was also changing. The transition from Hogeschool Haarlem to InHolland was accompanied by a reorganisation that unfolded in several phases. To people around the early IRADIS work, the change felt distinctly more business-oriented and commercial than the academic culture they had been used to at Hogeschool Haarlem.

At Hogeschool Haarlem, history, subject expertise, long-term collaboration, research, technical facilities and the results of earlier work were visibly part of the environment. In the new organisation, greater emphasis was placed on efficiently deployable capacity, location planning and measurable numbers of teaching and study places. Lecturers and programmes could be divided among different sites when that was organisationally more efficient. Long-established teams and collegial collaborations were consequently split apart as well; people who had worked directly together for years could subsequently end up tens of kilometres apart at different locations.

This different way of assigning value was also visible in how buildings were used. A laboratory, research space, aircraft collection or multifunctional area for technical and social learning occupied a relatively large amount of physical space without its value being easy to express as a number of individual seats or study places. Space around the simulator environment was converted to make room for rows of separate study places, with access controlled by code locks and use based on reserved time slots.

Elsewhere, new buildings were constructed that included catering and sports facilities which could be operated commercially in their own right. Square metres could thus increasingly be linked directly to measurable occupancy, individual use or commercial operation, while the value of laboratories, collections, research space and multifunctional meeting and working areas was much more difficult to express in such measures.

Generally accessible computer rooms with long worktables, space for equipment and books, and room for collaboration gave way to more individually arranged computer and study places with partitions and limited space around the user. Access to buildings and facilities became more tightly regulated with passes, gates, code locks and camera surveillance, while the roles of reception staff and caretakers changed or disappeared.

Historical knowledge and technical infrastructure also proved vulnerable to disappearance. When storage and basement areas were cleared, large quantities of old reports, research papers, technical documentation, teaching material and manuals were discarded. Laboratories and other specialised spaces were disposed of or given another function. Around the simulator environment, space in which people had previously been able to investigate, experiment, build, measure and work jointly on technical problems was partly converted into study space with tables and separate workstations where people could study independently with books, notebooks or a laptop.

At the same time, the character of the educational offering also changed. Alongside broad technical degree programmes of around four years, in which students learned a field, its underlying theory and different disciplines over an extended period, much shorter courses appeared that were strongly structured around learning to use a single specific software package or a limited vocational skill in practice.

A student might, for example, spend several months learning to work with a package such as Photoshop or Dreamweaver and obtain a diploma or qualification that primarily demonstrated an ability to use that package in a working environment. That represented a substantially different educational model from a broad multi-year degree programme. In later phases of the reorganisation, parts of the longer technical programmes were subsequently relocated, merged or reduced in scope.

The changes made visible that freedom of software, designs and documentation could cover only part of the problem of continuity. An organisation still retained control over space, access, infrastructure, people, collaboration and the conditions under which research, learning and joint work could continue.

This made the importance of an independent legal and organisational identity increasingly concrete. An environment could provide space for research, knowledge, technical infrastructure and human collaboration for years, while a new organisational direction could assess the same facilities according to entirely different criteria. The question therefore shifted towards how projects, ways of working and opportunities for collaboration could be organised independently enough not to remain wholly dependent on the direction of a single other institution.

The name IRADIS

The name also took time. An early proposal was IRDI, a recursive acronym for IRDI means IRDI Research and Development Institute. It fitted the hacker tradition, but was difficult to pronounce, remember and explain in different language contexts.

After various alternatives, IRADIS remained. The added A made the name easier to pronounce, and the S ultimately came to stand for Shared knowledge.

The name acquired two related meanings. The recursive version is IRADIS Research And Development Institute for Shared knowledge. The official meaning is International Research And Development Institute for Shared knowledge. Both refer to the same principle: research, development and practical knowledge should be capable of being shared, reused and made useful for further work.

Projects before the formal establishment

Before the formal establishment, work was already being done on educational tools, hardware interfaces, custom electronics, communications software and small development-board concepts that people could solder and program themselves. Some of this work was close to what would now be called maker education, free hardware or embedded development.

Simulator work formed one of the visible technical projects during this period. The F.28 simulator used a real cockpit from an aircraft that had been in normal service. Its computer and interface side brought together old hardware, custom electronics, MS-DOS and Windows systems, networks, real-time control, sensor readout, indicator control and visualisation.

The software around that work reused earlier low-level code from demoscene and systems-programming practice. This included Borland Pascal, flat 32-bit access, pre-emptive multitasking, sound and music routines, high-resolution drawing, IPX/SPX and UDP/IP networking, and communication with secondary computers that handled the cockpit interface through electronics developed in-house.

FSLink and the misunderstanding around Simulated Dynamics

One piece of software from this period was FSLink. It ran alongside Microsoft Flight Simulator 98 and exchanged data with the simulator process so that external hardware and software could respond to the simulated aircraft state. It was connected to the F.28 cockpit work and later to other simulator-related projects.

Simulated Dynamics was not the name under which the foundation operated. It was an unregistered working name or idea associated with the first software version and the presentation of that work. One copy of FSLink was sold to Hogeschool Haarlem, and another to Gert Heijnis. This was an important technical and personal milestone, but it did not define the later foundation as a commercial software company.

In retrospect, FSLink also made one of the early tensions concrete. The software demonstrated what could be built technically, but its closed nature did not fully fit already existing principles concerning freedom of knowledge and agency. The discussion around free software, open source, sharing and practical usability therefore gained a very concrete technical example against which different views could be tested.

Early locations and the shareable work model

In Overveen, the approach had already taken on a more independently recognisable form before the formal establishment. The subsequent location on Koningsteinstraat was also already in use during the notarial formalisation process in 2002.

At the time, these places were associated with IRADIS as locations where existing principles and a developing shared way of working took practical form: sharing knowledge, learning and working together, making technical possibilities visible, and connecting with local residents, organisations and other people involved. At the same time, the foundation's organisational work and other projects could be carried out from other environments.

Koningsteinstraat also brought another social environment into the work. World events and social tensions, including the period around the attacks of 11 September 2001 and the responses to them, were noticeable in neighbourhoods, religious communities and personal contacts as well. Discussions about religion, identity, knowledge, freedom, violence, responsibility and living together therefore had a direct social context rather than being exclusively theoretical subjects.

The first implementations in Overveen and on Koningsteinstraat were operated by people other than the foundation itself. The Overveen implementation also predated the existence of the legal entity.

From the creation of the legal entity in 2002, the foundation itself did become the operator of the location on Tugelastraat. This implementation still exists and is now the longest-running current location at which ASK-Solutions operates the shareable work model.

Both the model in development and physical implementations of it therefore existed before the foundation was established. The legal establishment in 2002 gave the foundation legal personality and from that point made it possible for the foundation itself to act as an operator of an implementation.

Formalising the foundation

By around 2000, the decision had been made to give the existing work an independent legal and organisational basis. At that time, the group was already engaged in technical projects, social and educational work, mentoring, teaching, educational support, think-tank work, fundraising and community activities. This work took place in and around schools, neighbourhood settings, community buildings, churches, mosques, local organisations, technical project spaces and the first physical implementations of the practical work model.

Formalisation gave the existing group and its projects an independent legal structure. This allowed the foundation, from its own organisational basis, to support projects, enter into collaborations, manage resources, define responsibilities and provide continuity, rather than remaining dependent for these on the separate environments in which the work had taken place until then.

The composition of the group around the establishment also developed. Yunus became involved in preparations for the foundation through the circle around Hüseyin and was initially intended to join the first board. When he withdrew before the final establishment, Robert took his place. This fitted Robert's by then strong involvement with the group and its day-to-day work.

The founders did not go to the notary with only a general idea. A detailed draft set of articles had been prepared, covering among other things the objective, composition and voting rights of the board, meetings and decision-making, annual accounts, employees, real estate, dismissal of board members and references to relevant provisions of the Dutch Civil Code. During discussions, they were also asked what the group was actually doing at that time. The ongoing technical, educational, social and community activities and projects were then described.

The articles that subsequently came back had been rewritten by a notarial employee according to the model the office used for legally correct foundation articles. This involved more than rephrasing legal provisions; the objective had also been replaced by a description that turned the concrete activities mentioned during the discussions into the purpose of the foundation and linked them to a revenue model devised by the notarial office itself, using wording around building, selling, purchasing, supplying and supporting.

Concepts the founders themselves used to describe the mission, such as shared knowledge, free software and free hardware, did not return in the same way. This led to a substantive discussion about what could be recognised as a statutory objective. Free software was not accepted by the notarial office as an independent concept, while the founders deliberately meant free software rather than simply software, software available at no charge, or a technical activity involving software.

Other parts of the submitted objective were also considered too abstract. The office's position was that such wording had to be translated into recognisable concrete activities: what does the foundation build, supply, organise or support?

One of the concrete projects already under way at the time was the Cosmicus A340 simulator with Stichting Cosmicus in Amsterdam. The relationship with Cosmicus had been established through Hüseyin. Hüseyin and Yunus jointly arranged the grant from the then Dutch Ministry of Education that made it possible to carry out the project.

The project combined children's education, social work, flight simulation, free software, free hardware and practical technical learning. The technical development of the simulator built on earlier interface work around the F.28 simulator at Hogeschool Haarlem, including the roots of BFX and RDDP, libGC and A340GC.

Precisely because Cosmicus was a concrete, ongoing project that was easy to recognise in legal terms, it acquired a much larger place in the first articles than the broader mission of which it was only one implementation. The statutory objective therefore came to focus strongly on developing, building or purchasing simulators, simulation software and hardware, mathematical models, and supporting schools, universities and foundations in such work.

The name encountered the same way of processing. The chosen name was IRADIS Foundation, with IRADIS intended not as an ordinary proper name but as an acronym with its own meaning. In the formal process, however, the name was altered as if the submitted spelling needed correction: Foundation became Stichting and IRADIS was treated as Iradis, as though it were an ordinary name in which the capitalisation carried no meaning.

Even after the founders pointed this out, correction was not straightforward. At the Chamber of Commerce, another discussion arose about what could be wrong with Iradis if that was how it appeared in the deed. Eventually, among other things, the spelling IRADIS could be restored, but the complete chosen name IRADIS Foundation could not be recorded as the statutory name.

The discussions went beyond spelling. The view that a Dutch foundation should use a Dutch designation for its legal form also played a role, with arguments concerning Dutch law, the native language and Americanisation.

The formal Dutch legal entity was therefore registered as Stichting IRADIS, while IRADIS Foundation remained the name and identity chosen by the founders. This distinction matters in this history: Stichting IRADIS is the result of the formal Dutch processing of the establishment and not the name from which the identity IRADIS Foundation later developed.

2002: the IRADIS Public License

The question of continuity was not limited to the legal entity itself. In the earlier practice, a shareable way of working had become recognisable that was not intended to depend on one organisation, one location or one group of people. At the same time, there was already extensive experience with free software, free hardware and copyleft as ways of protecting certain freedoms around software, designs and documentation.

The changes around Hogeschool Haarlem and InHolland made visible, however, that copyleft could not solve a different kind of dependence. A free-software licence can, for example, protect the freedom to study, modify and redistribute software, but it cannot prevent an institution from closing a space, changing access, removing equipment, dispersing people, redeploying infrastructure or ending a form of collaboration.

This raised another problem: how can not only an individual copyrighted work, but also a shareable way of collaborating and operating remain sufficiently independent to be continued elsewhere when an existing organisation or operator changes direction?

In 2002, IRADIS therefore released the IRADIS Public License 1.0 (IPL 1.0). Laura was the principal substantive contributor to its development. The IPL attempted to bring together existing knowledge about freedom, collaboration, copyleft and organisational dependence with practical experience of the work model in a protective framework that looked beyond copyright alone.

The IPL described the shareable work model that had become recognisable in the earlier practice and attempted to establish conditions under which its principles and continuation would not become wholly dependent on the interests or choices of a later user, operator or organisation.

The IPL was later developed further and renamed the Howard Public Licence (HPL). A detailed description of the current HPL and how it is applied belongs with the documentation of the model itself. For the history of the foundation, what matters most is that this protective idea already arose in 2002 from the combination of existing ideas about freedom of knowledge and copyleft with concrete experiences showing that copyright-based freedom alone does not provide sufficient protection for a work model, collaboration or institutional environment.

Early public-benefit and community work

From the beginning, the foundation's principles took form simultaneously in technical, educational, social and community-oriented work. Mentoring and practical support could centre on learning, motivation, collaboration and personal direction, while technical projects, software, electronics, simulators, tools or repair provided a concrete activity within which people could meet and share knowledge.

Not every subject in which someone had become stuck first had to be approached as an abstract conversation. Through another activity, attention, trust or motivation could begin moving again. Conversely, practical activities were not merely a way to keep people occupied: they could also raise new questions about independence, ownership, knowledge and the way someone relates to a problem or environment.

Part of the work was connected with neighbourhood communication, local community networks and educational organisations. Part grew from conversations, mentoring, project work and people simply walking in. The common thread was that different forms of knowledge and activity together created concrete opportunities to learn, collaborate, build confidence and experience influence over one's own environment.

Hüseyin played an important role in these social and educational projects during the early years. Through him, contacts and projects with Stichting Witte Tulp and Stichting Cosmicus, among others, became connected with the foundation. In doing so, he brought not only projects but also his own community network, cultural background and experiences around education and guidance.

The guidance work connected with Stichting Witte Tulp developed as an educational and community-oriented project in which mentoring, cultural self-confidence, safe computer use and technical explanation all had a place. Other people from the circle around the foundation, including Jolanda, were also active as volunteers at Witte Tulp.

IslamicScience closely matched Hüseyin's steadily growing personal interest at the time in Arabic mathematics, the history of science, architecture and historical sources. Within the project, these subjects could be connected with education, manuscripts, documentation and structured web publishing. Hüseyin subsequently continued to pursue this interest increasingly through his own studies and later teaching and research.

This development also shows that influence did not run in only one direction. Projects grew from knowledge and interests that people involved already brought with them, while concrete projects and encounters could in turn enable new questions, contacts and further personal or academic development.

The practical work model that had already taken concrete form at the early locations was later developed further under the project name The Owl’s Nest. It brings practical work, learning, collaboration, social connectedness and knowledge sharing together in a model that can be applied and further developed in different places and by different operators.

Tools and technology provide a concrete environment within it for working together, passing on experience and knowledge, investigating questions and allowing people to practise, discover and learn for themselves. Making and repairing are therefore both activities and means of putting independence, understanding, collaboration and knowledge transfer into practice. The later project name made the existing project and way of working more recognisable within the public structure.

From IRADIS to recognisable public names

In the early years, many different kinds of work were presented under the name IRADIS. Projects that needed to be developed, delivered, used or passed on as distinct outcomes were given their own names. Without such a name, software, hardware, protocols and other deliverable projects could not be clearly distinguished from one another or from the organisation itself. Deliverable projects therefore received names such as BackPage, Synergos, BFX, OpenBus and A340GC.

More implementation-oriented projects were treated differently. Projects carried out in collaboration with, for example, Stichting Cosmicus and Stichting Witte Tulp had their own purpose, context and implementation, but did not always receive a separate public project name at the time. The practical project around locations, learning, repair and knowledge sharing also remained publicly visible under the broader IRADIS name for a long time.

In the period after The Italian Situation, it became clearer that these implementation-oriented projects also needed recognisable names of their own. This made it easier, including for people outside the organisation, to distinguish the legal entity, the organisation's public identity and individual projects.

The IRADIS Foundation remained the foundation and legal entity. ASK-Solutions became the recognisable public organisational name. The much older practical project centred on the shareable work model later received the name The Owl’s Nest.

Historical projects carried out, for example, in collaboration with Stichting Cosmicus and Stichting Witte Tulp would probably also have received their own project names earlier under this later naming approach, just as a later project such as Bōzuki has its own distinct name. Because those historical projects already existed at the time and largely belonged to the past, there was no practical reason to retrospectively introduce new proper names and separate project websites for them.

During the same period, visual recognisability was developed further as well. Howard, the owl that appears as a mascot in different forms, became part of the broader visual language of ASK-Solutions and its projects. The base form is used for ASK-Solutions, while variants can carry recognisable characteristics of a project. With Nocterra, for example, Howard appears with an N, and with The Owl’s Nest with a hammer.

The shared mascot makes the relationship between ASK-Solutions and its projects recognisable, while the different names and variants simultaneously show which organisation or project someone is dealing with.

The name The Owl’s Nest therefore marks the later public naming of an existing project. The shareable work model and the first physical implementations on which that project builds predate the foundation.

Locations and continuity

From the beginning, the work has had both physical and networked forms. Before the legal foundation existed, BBS systems, FidoNet, DNS, mail and web servers were already part of the technical and communications environment. This continued through systems in several people's homes, at Hogeschool Haarlem, at the office and later in data centres. The internet was used to publish, communicate, host software and share documentation.

There were also physical places where people could actually meet, see practical work, ask questions and participate themselves. The first implementation in Overveen existed before the formal foundation, and the location on Koningsteinstraat was already present during the formalisation process in 2002. From 2002, the foundation itself also operated the Tugelastraat location, which is now the longest-running current location.

Other implementations could change over time as access to space, collaboration with other organisations or the nature of the work changed. The organisation, projects, operators and concrete locations could have different relationships to one another.

The office and back office provided continuity for administration, storage, coordination and long-running projects. The networked side provided continuity for communication, publishing, software and documentation. Physical implementations provided the space in which people could meet, use tools and technology, ask questions and exchange knowledge in practice.

Experiences with changing school, project and collaboration environments made clear that continuity does not arise automatically. Space can disappear, equipment can be disposed of, people can be relocated and knowledge can be lost when no one explicitly takes responsibility for preserving and continuing it.

Free software and free hardware already existed within this history before these experiences. What the changing institutional environments mainly reinforced was the importance of independent infrastructure, durable documentation, organisational continuity of one's own and protective models for aspects of shared work that cannot be protected by ordinary copyright-based copyleft.

This history has strongly influenced how ASK-Solutions thinks about tools, space and knowledge. A workshop is more than a room with machines. It is a social and technical environment where people can return, practise, ask questions, share experience and build confidence and knowledge over time.

Publishing, BackPage, Synergos and Nocterra

Alongside its physical and educational work, ASK-Solutions also built publishing tools. The early web carried a direct promise: people and organisations could publish, share knowledge and build tools without needing permission from a large software vendor, publisher or broadcaster. Yet the available tools often pulled websites towards proprietary workflows, browser-specific output or dependence on hosting providers.

The first publishing-system project was BackPage, built in response to the limitations of both manually maintained HTML and desktop web-authoring workflows. BackPage worked from structured source files and generated website output. It later formed the starting point for the separate project Synergos, which explored a more interactive publishing model, including SQL-based structure, WYSIWYG editing, pages, products, orders and payment processing.

The marketplace and webshop direction was eventually abandoned, but work on structured publishing continued. After The Great Server Crash™, which had taken place several years before 2019, Synergos was not restored as it had been. Very early in 2019, Nocterra was started as a separate project. Useful lessons from BackPage and Synergos were carried forward, while choices that no longer fitted the desired direction were deliberately left behind.

Nocterra therefore did not become a simple continuation of Synergos, but a separate project in which earlier experience was reconsidered: a general-purpose free-software CMS with an emphasis on source-based publishing, generated output, transferable deployment, maintainability and long-term user control.

Software, protocols and simulator projects

The simulator-related work also continued after the early FSLink period. The roots of BFX and RDDP were already present in the F.28 simulator work at Hogeschool Haarlem, where real cockpit hardware needed to communicate with software running on computers. Through the later Cosmicus A340 simulator project, several parts of this took clearer shape as free software and free hardware.

A340GC, libGC and RDDP developed software and communication protocols around those projects. BFX focused on the hardware interface. Together they show how simulator work became more than a one-off product: it was a way of connecting real hardware, software, communication protocols, interfaces and documentation in forms that could be understood, reused and preserved.

Making, fabrication, repair and reuse

Making, repairing and reuse took on increasingly concrete forms within the practical work model. Working on real objects makes it possible to investigate a problem together, transfer knowledge and experience, understand a design and allow someone to discover for themselves how something is constructed, modified or restored.

The available technical capabilities grew over time to support this. Tools, machines, electronics, measurement equipment, 3D printing and other workshop facilities enabled an increasing range of work, from repair and prototyping to reproducing parts that are no longer available. The same facilities could be used for personal projects, education, research and joint practical work.

Repair and reuse in particular make visible knowledge that can easily remain hidden in a finished product. A failed component, a measurement, a connector or a construction choice can become a reason to investigate how something works, why it failed and how it could be designed or repaired differently. Making and repair thus connect practical action with understanding, independence, knowledge transfer and the ability to continue investigating and modifying technology oneself.

Bringing the articles back to the mission

For many years, the foundation operated under articles in which one concrete project was recorded much more visibly than the mission and broader activities from which it had emerged. The customary closing provision covering activities directly or indirectly connected with the objectives provided legal room for related work, but did not make the underlying mission itself any clearer.

The difference therefore was not between what the foundation claimed in its articles and what it actually did. The work fitted within the statutory scope and was consistent with the work for which the foundation had been established. The difference was between a concrete legal description strongly shaped by one project of the time and the broader mission the founders had originally tried to record.

When the articles later had to be modernised, the foundation therefore did not want to start again from a list of current activities, but finally to record the objective from the mission and philosophy from which the work had developed. This, too, proved not to be straightforward. For the 2024 amendment, several notarial offices were consulted before an office was found that was willing to treat the objective in that way.

One office wanted to make only limited changes to the existing objective, for example by altering a few words or adding activities. Another again wanted first to establish what concrete activities the foundation carried out and then draft an objective from those itself. This threatened to recreate the same problem as at the establishment: current examples of implementation would once again take the place of the reason those activities were carried out at all.

This could, for example, lead to an objective centred on repairing computers, designing websites, organising workshops or even arranging the sale of coffee and tea. These are activities that may occur within the work at a particular time, but they are not the reason the foundation exists.

The foundation instead wanted to record why knowledge sharing, practical development, collaboration and free software and hardware are promoted, without making the objective dependent on the concrete activities through which this happens at any particular moment.

The notarial office that ultimately carried out the amendment did accept that the objective could be described from the broader mission. As a result, the statutory objective could finally correspond much more directly with the philosophy that had underpinned the work before the establishment and that had been developed further in the intervening years through new experiences, people and projects.

There nevertheless remained discussion about the structure of the board. The foundation wanted a board of at least three directors, with concrete functions and responsibilities distributed through internal arrangements and decision-making, rather than one fixed statutory model with exactly one chair, one secretary and one treasurer.

After extensive consultation, it was established that the board consists of at least three directors and that the functions of chair, secretary and treasurer are distributed among the directors, with one director able to perform more than one of these functions. Other desired forms of governance flexibility were not fully adopted. The rules around suspension, for example, remained based on the chosen statutory decision-making structure, and a possible future supervisory board was not included in advance; introducing one would require another amendment of the articles.

The amendment of 10 October 2024 thus brought the formal objective much closer to the foundation's mission, even though not every element of the desired organisational structure could be recorded literally as originally proposed.

What remained the same

Over the years, people, names, locations, tools, public websites, insights and formulations continued to develop. A recognisable thread through that development is the aim of sharing knowledge in such a way that people gain enough understanding and agency to understand, investigate, learn, repair, build, collaborate and make choices for themselves.

Today, that work takes shape in, among other things, articles, software, documentation, social and educational work, practical technology, repair and various projects. The Owl’s Nest project builds on the shareable work model for practical work, learning and knowledge sharing that was recognisable from early on. ASK-Solutions operates that model itself at several locations, while other operators can also implement the model.

The Howard Public Licence, which developed from the IRADIS Public License, is one of the ways in which the foundation seeks to protect the continuity and shareability of that model in areas where ordinary copyright-based copyleft is not sufficient.

The work is local where people meet and collaborate physically, and international where knowledge, software, documentation, designs, models and experiences can be shared, adapted and developed further across borders.

Important dates and milestones

The timeline begins in the period when people, projects and forms of collaboration that would later come together within the foundation became increasingly recognisably connected. Each person involved already brought personal, social, cultural, religious, philosophical, educational and technical backgrounds and experiences. The timeline therefore describes the emergence of the shared organisational history and the period in which these different strands became increasingly intertwined.