Centrallix - It's Different than what you Think

Centrallix History...

Once upon...

Once upon a land, in a far far away time, there was a living thing. Quality and beneficial Applications to make, desired he. So a Tool became his snarfage, and an Application did he make. The Application did he make, in the most usual way. And the storms came, and the horizontal motion of the air and the dihydrogen monoxide did take toll on the Application, and Time wore on as did the Land.

And gazing upon the prematurely twitching, dying remains of his Application, the living thing to himself remarked, "A better way there must be."

"It starts with the Foundation," the Guide replied. "It's not all your Application, there must first be a Foundation. And a solid Foundation must you choose, a Foundation of rock must there be."

Beginnings...

Well, enough of the story stuff! The concept for Centrallix, dating back nearly a decade ago, arose from the desire to do it Differently, out of a conviction that a thing needed to be accomplished (an application), but that a new way of doing things was needed. Many of the distinctives of Centrallix arose from a recognition of the ways in which other approaches represented "Foundations of sand."

As a LightSys project, implementation actually began in late 1998 as a framework for a simple report writer for a project at Operation Mobilization (the same place that SquirrelMail found its inception), although the system's architecture was designed to encompass far more.

Centrallix was first demonstrated and used at the ICCM conference at Taylor University in June of 1999.

In June of 2002, Centrallix and its motivating project, Kardia, won first place in ICCM's "Technology for Mission" contest. That followed several months of intense development work by LightSys and a group of Taylor University students in the context of a unique "open source software development" class.

In August 2003, we first deployed Centrallix in production at STL USA as a report writer.

Centrallix is an ambitious effort, and one of risk. We are definitely not taking the road well traveled. This is an adventure! And we recognize our own limitations, but still desire to serve our community.

About LightSys...

LightSys Technology Services, Inc., is a charitable nonprofit organization. We are very supportive of open-source, free, and standards-based software, since it fits well with the way we do business. LightSys provides basically free consulting and IT services to other Christian nonprofit/missions organizations, and we ourselves are publicly supported (via donations). We must admit that such is a bit of an unusual business model for an IT services firm!

The Water...

As a background to the Centrallix name at the top of these pages is an image of lake water (in this case, from Lake Superior off of the North Shore in Minnesota).

Water is a major element of Change. It has been the force that has molded and carved much of the Earth's surface (whether you believe it happened over a long period of time, or via Noah's flood, or both). Water, in Christian baptism, also symbolizes the change that occurs in one's life by the power of God. The Bible says Jesus cleanses His church "by the washing of water with the word."

Water is also a major element of Life. Without water this planet could not sustain life. Our bodies are mostly water. Even some of the driest of organisms on the planet are designed to conserve water. Jesus also said that He had Living Water to offer, the perfect and forever quencher of Thirst.

And, Life often breeds Change. Living things often work in conflict against their surroundings. Plants grow, against the force of gravity. Love works against the shouting of selfishness in this world. And, only live fish move upstream.

We desire our work in Centrallix to reflect Life, and to reflect a design that anticipates Change.

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