Katadhin Business Plan

Katahdin Consulting

Business Plan

Chris Seaton

chris@chrisseaton.com

May 2007

Katahdin Consulting Business Plan

Executive Summary

Technology

Katahdin is a single runtime that allows developers to use multiple programming languages in the same

program, the same file, even the same function. Instead of a different runtime for each language,

Katahdin uses loadable language definition modules. Users can modify language definitions to add

new constructs, such as operators or statements, as easily as they define new functions and classes.

New language definitions can be created to allow Katahdin to run programs written in an existing

language, or new languages can be designed from scratch.

Katahdin is a unique application of recent research into parsing theory, developed as the master’s thesis

of University of Bristol student Chris Seaton. A paper describing the theory behind Katahdin has been

submitted for publication at the 2007 Generative Programming and Component Engineering

conference.

Business Model

Using Katahdin lowers development costs:

•

Only one runtime needs to be maintained and supported

•

You can use any language for any part of the program

•

Code can be reused between different languages

•

Domain-specific languages can be developed as easily as writing a function library

Katahdin Consulting is the business that will be established to use this technology to lower

development and maintenance costs to businesses. Katahdin is particularly well suited to solving

problems involving:

•

Legacy systems that are dependent on old or unsupported runtimes, or that don’t run on

modern hardware

•

Programs written in languages where developers are hard to find or expensive to hire

•

Systems that are written in domain-specific or obsolete languages

The Katahdin technology will be released as open source software and promoted as a community

project to gain exposure to developers. We will encourage users to form a community to share

language definitions....