Steam provides a technical platform which allows groups of students, lecturers and any other groups to construct and arrange their individual and cooperative learning and working space.

steam consists of an object-oriented server connected to a database and web, java and other (ftp, irc, ...) clients. the server is event-driven and manages all user objects as well as the communication between the connected clients.

different from most other cooperation tools is the novel possibility of self-organisation and self-administration by the members within the virtual environment.

in the core, the system provides the following self-administrating functions:

* creation of rooms
* granting of admission or access authorisations
* administration and processing of objects or references to objects and
documents located on other servers
* carrying objects and passing them on to other users
* use of rooms as cooperative media (e.g. shared whiteboard)
a more detailed description can be found on the website: http://www.open-steam.org/

this package contains the architecture dependent libraries used by the steam server.