History¶

The history of Synodalsoft starts in 1992 with TIM, a DOS-based framework used to write customized database applications for small enterprises. TIM was written by Luc Saffre for PAC Systems as copyright holder. In 2024, although TIM is more than 30 years old, it continues to return enough money for maintaining it and giving professional support to its users. TIM users have relatively wide-spread profiles, ranging from the independent craftsman who writes 50 invoices per year to the government agency with 30 users and hundreds of documents per day.

Luc has been working on writing a successor for TIM since 1996. He has done research projects in C++, PHP and Java.

In August 2001, Luc moved from Belgium to Estonia and his new employer has been Rumma & Ko OÜ since. PAC Systems discontinued support for TIM but gave permission to Luc to continue providing support services from Estonia. And to publish the source code of TIM as Free Software.

PAC Systems changed their name to AbAKUS in 2003(?).

Since August 2004 Luc is mostly working in Python. In March 2009 he discovered Django whose database model and application server concepts seem ideal for Lino. In August 2009 he started to use the ExtJS JavaScript framework. In August 2013 he published a first version of Lino on Sourceforge (where it is now unmaintained, nowadays Lino is hosted on GitLab).

The first real-world Lino application went into production in a Belgian Public Centre for Social Welfare (PCSW) in January 2011. In August 2012 he forked “Lino Welfare” out of the Lino core into a separate source repository in order to make it maintainable by an independent organization.

In September 2012 we registered the domain name lino-framework.org.

In July 2013 the second real-world Lino application started in Czechia.

In March 2014 we started the third Lino production site, a second Lino Welfare in Belgium.

In December 2015 Lino got a second core developer to assist Luc: Hamza Khchine (Tunisia) started working for Rumma & Ko as a freelancer.

The Lino Voga project started in January 2016, thanks to Alexa (Belgium) who worked as a volunteer analyst almost full-time during eight months.

From April to November 2016, Annalisa and Johannes (Belgium) gave much of their time for the Lino Care project.

In December 2016 we started the Lino Avanti project in Belgium.

From January to May 2017, Tanel (Estonia) worked as project manager for Lino Vilma.

In February 2017 Lino got its third core developer: Tonis Piip (Estonia) started working for Rumma & Ko.

In May 2017 we started to work on Lino Tera for a pilot site operator in Belgium.

In June 2018 we started to work on Lino Presto for a pilot site operator in Belgium.

While Avanti and Welfare run well, the Tera and Presto projects had difficult to start because of fluctuations among the customers’ personnel.

In June 2020 (after three years of great teamwork) we sent away Tonis and Hamza because we wanted them to share their know-how to other development providers. They continue to be trusted contributors in the Lino developers team. Read the details in Luc’s blog post Lino reaches a new level.

In September 2020 Aris (Greece) started to work with my help on Lino Mentori.

In October 2020 Hannes Liivat (Estonia) started working full-time as system administrator for Rumma & Ko.

In February 2021 Sharif Mehedi (Bangladesh) started working on the Lino Shop project. Since April 2021 he works full-time as a fostered freelancer for the Lino developers team.

In June 2021 Sharif started working on the Lino Medico project.

In January 2024 we started maintaining a Django project for managing certificates in basic schools for a customer in Belgium.

Some stand-alone applications are no longer maintained: Lino Ciao, Lino Patrols and Lino Logos were spontaneous early projects. Others took longer to fall asleep: Lino Care (“Shared contacts and skills management for people who care”) and Lino Vilma (“Shared contact management for village communities”). Lino Sunto was the first (free) Lino application developed by somebody else than the author.