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About Us
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Media Develoment Loan Fund (MDLF) launched the Campware initiative in
March 2001 as a platform for open source solutions for independent news
media organizations in emerging democracies. The initative is
coordinated by MDLF's new-media arm, the Center for Advanced
Media--Prague (CAMP).
Campware grew out organically from the need of MDLF's CAMP to provide
cost-effective, open solutions for a number of new-media projects it
was pursuing.
While searching for such solutions (from 1999 onwards), CAMP realized
that most available software solutions for print and radio catered to
commercial players in the West and were thus beyond the financial reach
of independent media in emerging democracies. At the same time, open
source software tended to cater to the geek/webmaster community and as
such was not tremendously suitable for journalists. Mulitlinguality or
Unicode-support were just an occasional afterthought.
CAMP's main idea was that software developed and distributed under the
Campware initiative should be user-centric, i.e. built explicitly for
the end user. Our first project, Campsite, first released in March
2001, embodied such ideals. For example, we called things the way they
are called: our article was an "article," not an "asset"; our images
were called images not "objects"; Campsite's user interface was
automatically customized to each user based on his rights, so there
were almost no "You don't have the right to do this, please contact
your administrator" messages. And all of this the end user could read
in her very own language.
Campware continues to adhere to the logic of short learning curves and
non-mystifying interfaces in all its projects, from the Cream customer
relationship management software for newspapers, to the emerging
LiveSupport radio automation solution.
MDLF's active partners in Campware are Redaktion und Alltag (Berlin)
and the Department of Digital Design of the Parsons School of Design
(New York). Campware is open to cooperation with likeminded projects.
The Team
(In alphabetical order)
- Douglas Arellanes (Prague, Czech Republic), head of Research and Development at CAMP has been involved with all Campware projects.
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Paul Baranowski (Toronto, Canada), Campsite developer with his hand in many Campware mini-projects, helping to lead the LiveSupport crew
- Aleksandar Brajanoski (Prague, Czech Republic) is the real life
experience behind the campware web development. As Internet development
manager of Transitions Online, he helped to clarify and define the
functionality of the Campsite scripting language, and is a driving
force for inclusion of advanced features in the Campsite parser.
- Micz Flor (Berlin, Germany), the man behind all Campware concepts
- Ferenc Gerlits (Budapest, Hungary), LiveSupport developer
- Slobodan Gogić (New Belgrade, Serbia), member of the Media on the Web project team and co-author of Campsite packaged templates
- Sebastian Göbel (Berlin, Germany), Campware's jack of all trades, original coder of Campsite's PHPWrapper and localizer, responsible for the development of LiveSupport's web interface
- Michal Hruška (Prague, Czech Republic) is the man behind the Campware infrastructure.
- Robert Klajn (Belgrade, Serbia), of Radio B92 fame, is
in charge of the main features of the LiveSupport radio automation
project.
- Ondra Koutek (Prague, Czech Republic), sysadmin, Campsite tweaker and FreeBSD porter
- Roman Maxymchuk (Zurich, Switzerland), Cream & Dream developer
- Ana Nedić (Belgrade, Serbia and Montenegro), responsible for site design within the Media
on the Web project and co-author of Campsite packaged templates
- Nenad Pandžić (Prague, Czech Republic) is the main man behind Cream & Dream
- John Pye (Sydney, Australia), man of many Campware projects
- Holman Romero (Bogota, Columbia), Campsite developer and free software superstar working on various GNU projects and has given a number of presentations about free software
- Mugur Rus (Romania) is the father of the Campsite parser. He designed its
scripting language, coded it and wrote the language documentation and continues to be the driving force behind Campsite development
- Ljuba Ranković (Valjevo, Serbia), member of the Media on the Web project team and the man in charge of Serbian localization
- Sava Tatić (Prague, Czech Republic) is the managing director of CAMP, which kind of makes him have a finger in every Campware pie
- Charles Truett (New York, USA), the man in charge of Campware esthetics
- Zoran Živković (Belgrade, Serbia), head of the Media on the Web team, the iron fist of Campware implementation.
Campware hall of fame:
- Ákos Maróy (Budapest, Hungary), former head of LiveSupport development
- Lucian Mureşan is a gifted coder and database expert who has contributed greatly to the development of Campsite.
- Attila Egyedi, co-author of the original Campsite WYSIWYG editor Campfire
- Mira Zdjelar, beta testing
- Melissa Paulissen, documentation
- Joe Silber, documentation
- Sangita Shah, designed logos for all Campware products
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