ActiveState Software Inc is a Canadian

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated software documentation, documentation and data (computing), data. This is in contrast to Computer hardware, hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. ...

company headquartered in

Vancouver Vancouver ( ) is a major city in western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the city, up from 631,486 in 2016. Th ...

British Columbia British Columbia (commonly abbreviated as BC) is the westernmost Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada, situated between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. It has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that include ...

. It develops, sells, and supports

cross-platform In computing, cross-platform software (also called multi-platform software, platform-agnostic software, or platform-independent software) is computer software that is designed to work in several computing platforms. Some cross-platform software ...

development tools A programming tool or software development tool is a computer program that software developers use to create, debug, maintain, or otherwise support other programs and applications. The term usually refers to relatively simple programs, that can ...

for dynamic languages such as

Perl Perl is a family of two High-level programming language, high-level, General-purpose programming language, general-purpose, Interpreter (computing), interpreted, dynamic programming languages. "Perl" refers to Perl 5, but from 2000 to 2019 it ...

PHP PHP is a General-purpose programming language, general-purpose scripting language geared toward web development. It was originally created by Danish-Canadian programmer Rasmus Lerdorf in 1993 and released in 1995. The PHP reference implementati ...

, Python,

Ruby A ruby is a pinkish red to blood-red colored gemstone, a variety of the mineral corundum (aluminium oxide). Ruby is one of the most popular traditional jewelry gems and is very durable. Other varieties of gem-quality corundum are called sapp ...

, and Tcl, as well as language distributions and enterprise services. ActiveState is owned by its employees and Pender Financial Group, an investment company focused on

technology Technology is the application of knowledge to reach practical goals in a specifiable and reproducible way. The word ''technology'' may also mean the product of such an endeavor. The use of technology is widely prevalent in medicine, scie ...

and healthcare sectors in

after briefly being a member of the

Sophos Sophos Group plc is a British based security software and hardware company. Sophos develops products for communication endpoint, encryption, network security, email security, mobile security and unified threat management. Sophos is primari ...

group.

History

Acquisition of ActiveState Corp was first announced in September 2003 by Sophos Plc. ActiveState's president Steve Munford who is part of the acquisition will become a member of Sophos's executive management team as Global VP Messaging.

Sophos ownership era

In January 2006, Pender Financial Group which was announced in January 2006 has entered into an agreement with Sophos Inc. to acquire ActiveState Software Inc. In February 2006, ActiveState Software Inc. announced its acquisition by Pender Financial Group Corporation from Sophos Inc., a subsidiary of Sophos Plc., for the purchase price of US$2,250,000. Following the acquisition, Bart Copeland will become ActiveState Software Inc.'s President and CEO, and Dr. David Ascher will become ActiveState Software Inc.'s CTO and VP of Engineering. Following the sales of ActiveState to PFG, David Ascher of ActiveState revealed that Sophos agreed to sell ActiveState because developing programming tools did not fit Sophos's business model.

Pender Financial Group ownership era

ActiveState was named one of

Canada's Top 100 Employers Canada's Top 100 Employers is an annual editorial competition that recognizes the best places in Canada to work. First held in 1999, the project aims to single out the employers that lead their industries in offering exceptional working conditions ...

in October 2006 as it was published in

Maclean's ''Maclean's'', founded in 1905, is a Canadian news magazine reporting on Canadian issues such as politics, pop culture, and current events. Its founder, publisher John Bayne Maclean, established the magazine to provide a uniquely Canadian persp ...

magazine, along with several other software companies.

Licensing change

Somewhere around 2013 the licensing model for ActiveState products changed from paid support to paid commercial use.

Subsidiaries

*Phenona: In June 2011, ActiveState Software Inc. announced the acquisition of Phenona. *Appsecute Limited: In June 2013, ActiveState Software Inc. announced the acquisition of Appsecute. The acquisition would become ActiveState's strategy to pair Appsecute with Stackato.

Products

ActiveState products include:

ActiveState Komodo Komodo Edit is a free and open source text editor for dynamic programming languages. It was introduced in January 2007 to complement ActiveState's commercial Komodo IDE. As of version 4.3, Komodo Edit is built atop the Open Komodo project. Komodo ...

, an

integrated development environment An integrated development environment (IDE) is a software application that provides comprehensive facilities to computer programmers for software development. An IDE normally consists of at least a source code editor, build automation tools a ...

(IDE) for dynamic languages;

Perl Dev Kit Komodo Edit is a free and open source text editor for dynamic programming languages. It was introduced in January 2007 to complement ActiveState's commercial Komodo IDE. As of version 4.3, Komodo Edit is built atop the Open Komodo project. Komodo ...

(PDK) and

Tcl Dev Kit TCL or Tcl or TCLs may refer to: Business * TCL Technology, a Chinese consumer electronics and appliance company **TCL Electronics, a subsidiary of TCL Technology * Texas Collegiate League, a collegiate baseball league * Trade Centre Limited ...

(TDK), productivity and deployment tools for Perl and Tcl programmers; and free and commercial language distributions,

ActivePerl ActivePerl is a distribution of Perl from ActiveState (formerly part of Sophos) for Windows, macOS, Linux, Solaris, AIX and HP-UX. A few main editions are available, including: Community (free, for development use only), and several paid tiers ...

, ActivePython, and ActiveTcl for AIX,

HP-UX HP-UX (from "Hewlett Packard Unix") is Hewlett Packard Enterprise's proprietary implementation of the Unix operating system, based on Unix System V (initially System III) and first released in 1984. Current versions support HPE Integrit ...

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which i ...

OS X macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and la ...

, Solaris, and

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ...

Komodo

* Komodo 11: Features Smart and responsive autocomplete browser and overall performance symbol for faster performance. * Komodo 12: Autocomplete becomes more reliable and activates from any position and using one click to control, the package manager and execute commands directly inside the file, supporting Python (pip),

(Composer),

(PPM), Ruby (Gem), and Node.js (npm and Yarn).

Python

ActivePython is a software package consisting of the

Python (programming language) Python is a high-level, general-purpose programming language. Its design philosophy emphasizes code readability with the use of significant indentation. Python is dynamically-typed and garbage-collected. It supports multiple programming pa ...

implementation

CPython CPython is the reference implementation of the Python programming language. Written in C and Python, CPython is the default and most widely used implementation of the Python language. CPython can be defined as both an interpreter and a compi ...

and a set of extensions, packaged to facilitate installation. As of 2006, it ran on

Mac OS X macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...

, Solaris, AIX and

platforms. ActivePython for Windows includes the PyWin32 extensions for programming with the Win32 API. It also includes the

IDLE, although this requires manual setup.

Stackato

In February 2012, ActiveState announced general availability of Stackato. According to the announcement, Stackato "''makes it easy to develop, deploy, migrate, scale, manage, and monitor applications on any cloud''", and is available in Enterprise, Micro Cloud, and Sandbox editions. In December 2012, ActiveState announced the

OEM An original equipment manufacturer (OEM) is generally perceived as a company that produces non-aftermarket parts and equipment that may be marketed by another manufacturer. It is a common industry term recognized and used by many professional or ...

integration of Stackato with HP Cloud Services, specifically the HP Cloud Application Platform as a Service. HP describes the product as "an application platform for development, deployment, and management of cloud applications using any language on any stack". On July 28, 2015, Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. announced the acquisition of Stackato's business from ActiveState Software Inc.

Enterprise CI/CD

ActiveState confirmed that its Enterprise CI / CD Survey is available for participation by 2020. Based about how businesses commonly utilize CI / CD and how they address software runtime and create issues, the study is part of ActiveState 's ongoing initiatives to promote the development of open source technology.

References

{{reflist, 2

External links

ActiveState Company siteActiveState Code site
Software companies of Canada