Technologies

Code generation

Software writing is a laborious and error-prone task, and iMatix has invested considerably in R&D to automate this work. iMatix's Model Oriented Programming (MOP) is a world-class approach to code generation, developed by Pieter Hintjens and Jonathan Schultz over more than 15 years, and based on 100% open source technology from iMatix.

In 1992, Pieter Hintjens released Libero, a code generator that turns workflow models (finite state machines) into code in any programming language.

Code generation is the backbone of all iMatix technology. In 1996, Pieter Hintjens and Jonathan Schultz built the first generation of a generic code generator called "GSL". Today, we use GSL to construct codebots (software machines that write code) of rare sophistication and capability.

Today, iMatix software is almost entirely generated by MOP codebots. Codebots make no mistakes: our software is extremely reliable and consistently high quality.

Document processing

Website production has often been expensive and iMatix has developed elegant solutions to reduce these cost.

In 1997 we released htmlpp, a tool to automate website production.

Htmlpp includes the ability to turn plain text into HTML, like wikis, long before wikis existed. We found this capability so powerful that we produced gurudoc, a tool that turns plain text documentation into beautiful websites, PDFs, and documents.

Portability

iMatix software has always been fully portable. Portability ensures that our work is long-lasting, and useful to as many developers and users as possible. One of our first free products after Libero was SFL, a portability library for C developers.

Thanks to SFL, our Xitami web server runs on Windows, Linx, Unix and legacy systems like OS/2, OpenVMS, Beos.

Multithreading framework

In 1995, we built the first version of our SMT multithreading framework. Today, SMT/5 is the core of our high-performance servers.

Leveraged software development

iMatix is a world leader in leveraged software development, using codebots to produce high-quality code automatically. Traditionally, codebots are expensive to make; each is a specialised machine that compiles a custom modelling language into target code. We invented Model Oriented Programming methodology to make it simple and cost-effective to build new codebots. MOP is probably the most sophisticated code generation technology ever developed, anywhere.

Free software tools we actively develop

  • Boom - a build codebot.
  • Gurudoc - a document production codebot.
  • Libero - a code generator for state machine workflows.
  • XNF - a codebot that builds codebots.
  • iCL - a class system for object-oriented literal programming.
  • OPF - a codebot for configuration data sets.
  • SMT - a framework for building high-performance multithreaded servers.
  • ASL - a framework for building protocol servers and clients.
  • GSL - a scripting language specially designed for building codebots.

Current technology

Legacy technology

Vision

iMatix has embraced the vision of free software since our foundation. We believe that technology is stronger, and better, when it is used by more people. We choose to spend our resources on research and development, not marketing. We chose to sell some products, and services, but not technology.

Licenses

We use the FSF's General Public License (GPL) for our software with a few exceptions. We also offer all our clients the option of purchasing a commercial license.