ASK-Solutions

Before the foundation had a name

The roots of ASK-Solutions go back to a mixture of practical technology, philosophical discussion and hands-on learning. Long before the legal foundation was registered, people involved in its later formation were already working with software, hardware, electronics, simulation, web publishing, repair, communication systems, reverse engineering, free software, the hacker ethic, demoscene culture, BBS systems, FidoNet and the early internet.

That technical background mattered, but it was not the whole origin. The deeper question was ethical and practical: what happens when people are taught only to use systems, but not to understand them? What is lost when repair knowledge, technical knowledge or lived practical experience is kept behind closed doors? How do people gain confidence when they are allowed to see, ask, try, fail, repair and build together?

Those questions shaped the foundation before it had a final name. The early discussions were about knowledge, freedom, responsibility, learning, social work, community, education and the difference between merely using technology and actually understanding it.

Haarlem-Overveen: an open technical environment

In the late 1990s, work around the Aerospace Engineering department of Hogeschool Haarlem created an unusual practical environment. It was a school environment with offices, workshops, laboratories, storage rooms, simulator projects, technical collections and people moving between departments. The workshop, student association Sipke Wynia and aircraft collection were near 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 former Marinehospitaal (a naval hospital) site and a parking area. The path along the railway was used by students, staff, teachers, neighbourhood residents and visitors as a practical shortcut between the station, the school, nearby streets and the surrounding neighbourhoods. From that same side entrance, the neighbouring HEAO building was directly nearby. In practice, this made the area around the workshop and aircraft collection much more porous than a normal classroom or office corridor.

Laura, later one of the founders and still connected to the board, worked there on software, hardware, test systems and automation. One important early task was rebuilding a digital student testing platform from the ground up: designing small student terminals with keypads and displays, hardware interfacing and software on the teacher’s computer. Other work included measurement and testing equipment, educational hardware, custom electronics and reusable software.

Because the work happened next to visible school routes, shared spaces, the bar, the aircraft collection and the side entrance, technical work was not hidden behind a finished product. People could see terminals, cockpit parts, test equipment, drawings, cables, tools and half-finished solutions. That visibility mattered. It gave people a reason to stop, look and ask what something was, why it worked, why it failed or how it could be repaired.

Within the first weeks, conversations started with people who would become important to the later foundation. Hüseyin, then a student and already active in community work, became involved early. Piet de Wit, an engineer with a Hoogovens background, and Olaf van Bockel, a former pilot and flight test engineer, were working on the F.28 simulator project and needed help with the computer and automation side. Around those projects, the idea of what later became the IRADIS Foundation and The Owl’s Nest began to take shape: not yet as names, but as a way of working.

The aircraft collection itself was a major point of attraction, especially during open days and special events. It included aircraft material with stories attached to it, such as the Fokker Spin associated with early flight over Haarlem and a Sikorsky helicopter connected to Olaf’s own experience as a flight test engineer. These were not abstract teaching aids. They were physical objects with history, engineering problems and human stories, and they made the surrounding technical work easier to approach.

People came in through ordinary routes. Students from the neighbouring HEAO, students from other departments, technicians, teachers, classmates, visitors and people who already knew someone there found their way into the space. Neighbourhood children did not enter a restricted laboratory; they came into a visible school and workshop atmosphere where adults were present, doors were open and aircraft parts, tools and explanations made the place feel alive. They asked questions, watched what was happening and sometimes made simple drawings of the room and the people they met there, which they gave back as small signs of enthusiasm and appreciation.

What mattered was not only the machinery or the aircraft material, but the atmosphere. People could see complicated systems being explained by people who understood them. Someone could point at a cockpit part, a terminal, a cable, a piece of code or a broken device and explain what it did. That made technical work approachable, and it showed that knowledge did not have to remain locked inside books, institutions or finished products.

A foundation idea grows from practical work

The people around the early projects saw that technical work could do more than produce a device or a piece of software. A student who had lost motivation could become interested again by helping with a real problem. A child who only came to look could leave with a drawing, a question or a new sense that technology was something people made. Someone from another department could understand a difficult concept because it was explained through a cockpit, a circuit, a measurement or a broken part. Encouraged by people including Robert, Piet de Wit and Adriaan, a small group began to explore a more lasting form for this work.

The early group included people with different views on how knowledge should be shared. There were discussions about free software, the newly popular commercial framing of “open source”, hacker ethics, education, social responsibility and practical community work. These discussions were not side issues. They shaped the later identity of the foundation.

The name also took time. One early proposal was IRDI, a recursive acronym for IRDI means IRDI Research and Development Institute. It matched the hacker tradition, but was difficult to pronounce, remember and communicate across various language contexts. After trying different alternatives, IRADIS remained. The added A made the name more pronounceable, and the S eventually came to stand for Shared knowledge.

Projects before formal registration

The work before formal registration was broader than flight simulation. It included educational tools, hardware interfaces, custom electronics, communication software and small development-board concepts that people could solder and program themselves. Some of that work was close to what would now be called maker education, free hardware or embedded development.

Simulator work was one visible part of the environment, but not the whole origin. The F.28 simulator used a real cockpit from an aircraft that had flown in normal service. The computer and interface side brought together old hardware, custom electronics, MS-DOS and Windows systems, networking, real-time control, sensor reading, indicator control and visualisation.

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

FSLink and the Simulated Dynamics misunderstanding

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 interact with 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 around the first software version and the presentation of that work. A copy of FSLink was sold to Hogeschool Haarlem, and another copy was sold to Gert Heijnis. That was an important technical and personal milestone, but it did not define the later foundation as a commercial software company.

In hindsight, FSLink also made one of the early tensions visible. The software showed what could be built, but its closed-source nature did not fully match the direction that became central to the foundation. The discussion around free software, open source, sharing and practical usefulness continued and helped shape the IRADIS framing.

Formalising the foundation

By 2000, the decision had formed to give the work a legal and organisational base. The group had already been doing technical projects, social and educational work, mentoring, teaching, educational support, think-tank work, fundraising and community activity. That work happened in and around school environments, neighbourhood settings, community centres, churches, mosques, local organisations and technical project spaces.

One of the first concrete formal project lines was the Cosmicus A340 simulator with Stichting Cosmicus in Amsterdam. The project was funded by the then Dutch Ministry of Education and combined children’s education, social work, flight simulation, free software, free hardware and practical technical learning. It built on earlier simulator-interface work around the F.28 simulator at Hogeschool Haarlem, including the roots of BFX and RDDP, libGC and A340GC.

The legal route took time, and the difficulty was not only finding the right words. The founders were trying to formalise a mission around shared knowledge, cooperation, free software, free hardware, practical education, social responsibility and public-benefit technical work. The notary pushed back hard on that kind of wording. Knowledge sharing was treated as too abstract: legally recognisable activities were framed as building, selling, buying, supporting or delivering something concrete. Free software and free hardware were not treated as distinct mission concepts, but as ordinary software, hardware, source release, schematics, service or support around something made or sold.

The concrete Cosmicus A340 simulator project therefore became the form in which much of the broader mission was made legally visible. It involved children, education, simulation, software, hardware, mathematical models, cooperation and funded public-benefit work. As a result, the initial statutes focused heavily on developing, building or acquiring simulators, simulation software and hardware, mathematical models, and supporting schools, universities and foundations with that kind of work.

For many years, the foundation worked from that narrow formal wording while relying on the broad closing language in the statutes: activities directly or indirectly connected to those purposes, “in the broadest sense of the word”. That gave practical room to continue the real mission, but it did not clearly express the philosophy that had led to the foundation. The statutes were only changed later, through a different notary office, to reflect the broader mission more accurately and include the articles needed for ANBI purposes.

This became one of the foundation’s first clear confrontations with a recurring problem: ASK-Solutions works from mission, philosophy and intended public impact, while external systems often want concrete projects, deliverables, sectors, services or revenue categories. Over the years, the foundation has repeatedly had to describe its work in terms that administrations can process, without accepting that those administrative categories define the purpose of the work.

In 2002, the foundation received legal status under the name the IRADIS Foundation. The early work continued under the foundation, project names and activity names that fitted the work at the time. The public-facing name ASK-Solutions came much later, in 2019, after the Italian Situation, when a clearer umbrella name was needed for communication, projects, publications, software, repair, education and shared knowledge.

Early public-interest and community work

The early foundation work was not only technical. It was also social, educational and psychological in a practical sense. Participating in, or simply being present around, concrete work with software, electronics, simulators, tools or repair was often used as an indirect route: not by forcing people to confront the blocked subject directly, but by creating space through another activity. When attention, feeling and confidence could move, motivation for learning, cooperation or personal direction often returned by itself.

Some work was connected to neighbourhood communication, local community networks and educational organisations. Some work grew from informal conversations, mentoring, project work and people simply walking in. The common thread was that technical work, cultural context and practical explanation could become ways to learn, cooperate, regain confidence and understand the world as something people can affect rather than only consume.

The later guidance work connected to Stichting Witte Tulp belongs next to the Cosmicus line. It developed as a related educational and community project line, with mentoring, cultural confidence, safe computer use and technical explanation as part of the same broader approach. IslamicScience continued part of that learning line through science history, mathematics, architecture, manuscripts and structured web publishing.

This is also where The Owl’s Nest belongs. The Owl’s Nest is not only a single address, but a working model: a place where tools, knowledge, patience, safety and explanation come together so people can make, repair, learn and share.

Workshops, locations and continuity

The foundation has always worked through both physical places and networked infrastructure. Even before the legal foundation existed, the work already had an online presence through BBS systems, FidoNet, DNS, mail and web servers. That continued through systems at home, at the Hogeschool Haarlem, at the office and later in data centres. The internet was part of the working environment from the start: a place to publish, communicate, host software, share documentation.

The office and backoffice provided continuity for administration, storage, coordination and long-running projects. Practical workshop locations changed more often, because access to space, tools and public activity depended on institutions, community buildings and later dedicated workshop locations. The networked side of the work helped preserve continuity when physical locations changed.

That history strongly influenced how ASK-Solutions thinks about tools, space and knowledge. A workshop is not only a room with machines. It is a social and technical environment where people can return, practise, ask questions, share experience and build confidence over time.

Publishing, BackPage, Synergos and Nocterra

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

The first publishing system in this line was BackPage, built as an answer to the limitations of both hand-maintained HTML and desktop web-authoring workflows. BackPage worked from structured source files and generated website output. It later evolved into Synergos, which explored a more interactive publishing model, including SQL-backed structure, WYSIWYG editing, pages, products, ordering and payment handling.

The marketplace and webshop direction was eventually left behind, but the structured publishing work continued. In 2019, after The Great Server Crash™, Synergos was not repaired as it was. Its useful publishing lessons were carried forward into Nocterra: a general-purpose free software CMS based on source-based publishing, generated output, portable deployment and long-term control.

Software, protocols and simulator lineage

The simulator-related work continued beyond 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, that line took clearer shape as free software and free hardware.

A340GC, libGC and RDDP formed part of the software and protocol lineage around that work. BFX formed part of the hardware interface line. Together they show how simulator work was more than a one-off product: it was a way to connect real hardware, software, communication protocols, interfaces and documentation in forms that could be understood, reused and preserved.

Making, fabrication, repair and reuse

As the projects became more diverse, ASK-Solutions also built up more practical fabrication capability. Tools, machines, electronics, 3D printing and later broader workshop facilities made it possible to repair equipment, reproduce unavailable parts, prototype ideas and teach through real objects.

These capabilities are not only production capacity. They are also educational capacity. When someone can see why a part failed, how a connector works, why a measurement matters or why a design choice creates a maintenance problem later, technology becomes less distant. Repair and making become ways to share knowledge.

What stayed the same

Over the years the names, locations, tools and public websites changed. The underlying thread stayed the same: knowledge should be shared where it helps people understand, repair, build, cooperate and make more independent choices.

Today ASK-Solutions works through articles, software, documentation, repair knowledge, public-benefit projects, practical websites and The Owl’s Nest locations. The work is local where people meet in a room, and international where knowledge, software, documentation and examples can be reused across borders.

Key dates and milestones