Afghans look to SA for open source

By Paul Vecchiatto, ITWeb Cape Town correspondent

Johannesburg, 07 Apr 2006

The University of the Western Cape (UWC) has released the penultimate version of its Kinky open source application framework, which, it says, has generated interest from as far as Afghanistan.

Kinky is a recursive acronym that stands for "Kinky Is Not KEWL Yet", referring to the fact that it is an application framework. It can be used to build any kind of application that requires a Web interface. Kinky is a modular form of the Web content development language PHP.

The application for which it was designed to build, KEWL.NextGen, is an e-learning application also designed by the university`s Free Software Innovation Unit (FSIU) together with the African Virtual Open Initiative and Resources project. The FSIU is located within UWC`s Information & Communication Services department.

Kinky and KEWL.NextGen are free software and licensed under the GNU General Public Licence. Both run on any platform that supports PHP4, including GNU/Linux, Windows, Mac OS-X and Solaris.

According to UWC professor Derek Keats, the latest version of Kinky, version 1.3, was supposed to be the last update before the release of version 2.

"However, we have had people demanding more functionality and version 2 won`t be ready for some time yet, so we will probably have to release a 1.4 version in a couple of months," he says.

Kinky version 1.4, should it be released in May, will have a full content management module and improved translation tools. Version 2 is scheduled to have an integrated, real-time virtual classroom when it is released later this year.

Keats claims Kinky has generated a lot of interest from around the world, especially from institutions that need a cost-effective application developer to create e-learning programs.

"Recently, I had queries from Kabul University," he says.

Kinky was developed using the PHP language and incorporates 250 modules that can be reconfigured to create a number of other applications. One of the modules includes Ajax for the back-end service of refreshing Web page content.

Apart from developing the KEWL system, Kinky is now being used to develop UWC`s R11 million Student Enrolment Management System.

"We are so confident in Kinky that we are using it to develop our service-oriented architecture and build all new applications and services for the university administrative systems," Keats says.

FSIU manager and lead developer, Paul Scott, says the latest release of Kinky includes some new modules, such as a wiki (a piece of server software that allows users to freely create and edit Web page content using any Web browser). However, it is mostly improvements to existing modules based on what has been learned from users during the past year of the system`s use.