Mxit grabs lion's share

Mxit has grabbed the lion's share of SA's mobile instant messaging market, says Herman Heunis, Mxit CEO and founder.

Heunis says he is still mulling over whether to open more of its applications for open source development. “It is a highly contentious issue at the moment, but we realise we must keep growing and improving the service.”

Serious consideration has to be given to what new programmers and software engineers want in their working environments, and tools such as open source, rather than just money, he adds.

Mxit CTO Pieter Nel says the company is one of the few software engineering projects in SA that is being developed from the ground up, and this gives young engineers invaluable experience.

“There is a paucity of genuine software engineering projects, as most use systems designed elsewhere, and because of this there is a general lack of places here where people can develop their expertise,” he says.

The company hosted a competition to develop a PC client for the Mxit service using open source software. Competitors were given just on two months in which to do this. Over 110 entries were received from around the world, but all five finalists were from SA.

Chris Stranex, a University of KwaZulu-Natal music student, won first prize, claiming the R100 000 accolade and the possibility of an employment contract.

Stranex's entry was entitled “Blendit” and was developed in Python. Nel says Stranex managed to submit a finished product that was stable, functional and extremely well designed.

“The application, which runs on both Windows and Linux, is lightweight and not too flashy or intrusive and fits the Mxit culture perfectly. Blendit carries all the regular instant messaging features, as well as Mxit specific elements like group messaging, clickable links and file sending,” Nel says.

Stranex, who wants to specialise in the blending of IT and music and plays the alto saxophone and keyboards, says he had to take his eye off his university studies when entering the competition, but he plans to complete them and has not decided whether or not to take up a job with Mxit.

Second place went to a team of three - Marc Bowes, Tim Sjoberg and Richard Baxter - who submitted an entry written in C++, called MxitC.

Heunis says if this entry had just a little more time, it would probably have won, as it was well compiled and had customisable client features that allow the user to change appearances of windows and skinz.

Third place went to Roscoe Skeens, whose entry was written in Java and was cited as being well compiled and well thought out.

Among the rest of the runners up was a 16-year-old grade 10 student from Wynberg Boys High School, Yasseen Houdilay.

Houdilay, who compiled his entry in Python, said he only learnt about the competition two weeks after it started and he had to learn the programming language as he developed his entry.

”It was a tight race and I only wish I had won,” he said.

The Mxit PC client applications can be downloaded free from at http://devzone.mxit.com.