Applixware is a suite of modular applications edited by Vistasource, Inc.

Applixware was originally created by Applix, Inc.

Applix

Applix Inc. was a software company founded in 1983 based in Westborough, Massachusetts that published Applix TM1, a MOLAP database server, and related presentation tools, including Applix Web and Applix Executive Viewer. Together, Applix TM1, Applix Web and Applix Executive Viewer were the three...

.

Alis

Applix's first office suite, introduced in 1986, was called Alis, and was marketed with Alice in Wonderland themed promotional items. One such was a mug depicting the tea party scene from the book, with a Cheshire Cat that disappeared when the mug was filled with a hot beverage.

Alis was available for unix

Unix

Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...

 workstations from Digital Equipment Corporation

Digital Equipment Corporation

Digital Equipment Corporation was a major American company in the computer industry and a leading vendor of computer systems, software and peripherals from the 1960s to the 1990s...

, Sun Microsystems

Sun Microsystems

Sun Microsystems, Inc. was a company that sold :computers, computer components, :computer software, and :information technology services. Sun was founded on February 24, 1982...

 and others. Two site licenses were sold for Digital's VMS

OpenVMS

OpenVMS , previously known as VAX-11/VMS, VAX/VMS or VMS, is a computer server operating system that runs on VAX, Alpha and Itanium-based families of computers. Contrary to what its name suggests, OpenVMS is not open source software; however, the source listings are available for purchase...

 operating system, one to Exxon

Exxon

Exxon is a chain of gas stations as well as a brand of motor fuel and related products by ExxonMobil. From 1972 to 1999, Exxon was the corporate name of the company previously known as Standard Oil Company of New Jersey or Jersey Standard....

 and one to a brokerage in New York City.

In addition to providing a graphical office suite environment with a number of modules including word processing functions, very advanced for the time, Alis was distinguished by a very powerful scripting language called "ELF", which was capable of, for example, reading spreadsheet data, performing calculations on it, and merging results into text documents.

Aster*x and Applixware

Applixware's next major project was called Aster*x, but was renamed to Applixware to avoid confusion with Asterix

Asterix

Asterix or The Adventures of Asterix is a series of French comic books written by René Goscinny and illustrated by Albert Uderzo . The series first appeared in French in the magazine Pilote on October 29, 1959...

 the comic book hero. During the mid-1990s, Applixware was one of a small number of WYSIWYG word processors available for unix systems. Competitors included products from Island Software

Island Software

Island Software, at one time located in California, was a software company providing desktop productivity applications for Unix workstations.Island Office was an office productivity suite available on many Unix systems in the 1990s....

 and proprietary software from the computer hardware companies.

In the late 1990s, Linux

Linux

Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...

 began to emerge as a desktop operating system, and Applixware was ported to Linux, becoming the first graphical office suite for the platform. Sales expanded to the point where Applixware was available across the USA as shrink-wrapped software on retail shelves at stores like CompUSA

CompUSA

CompUSA is a retailer and reseller of consumer electronics, technology products and computer services. Its headquarters are in Miami, Florida.Until its reorganization, CompUSA, Inc. was a wholly owned subsidiary of U.S. Commercial Corp S.A.B...

 and Microcenter.

In 1999, Sun Microsystems bought a competing product, StarOffice

StarOffice

StarOffice, known briefly as Oracle Open Office before its discontinuation in 2010, is a proprietary office suite. It was originally developed by StarDivision which was acquired by Sun Microsystems in 1999...

, and turned it into the open source

Open source

The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...

 OpenOffice software suite. That destroyed the market for competing software, and Applixware sales declined.

After OpenOffice

Applix Inc. began to seek other software markets, leveraging the power of their scripting engine and flexible architecture to expand into business intelligence

Business intelligence

Business intelligence mainly refers to computer-based techniques used in identifying, extracting, and analyzing business data, such as sales revenue by products and/or departments, or by associated costs and incomes....

 software markets such as OLAP

OLAP

In computing, online analytical processing, or OLAP , is an approach to swiftly answer multi-dimensional analytical queries. OLAP is part of the broader category of business intelligence, which also encompasses relational reporting and data mining...

. Applixware is often used in the industrial world as a means of developing large scale Unix and Linux applications, and glueing together other applications.

The Applixware unit of the company was renamed Vistasource, Inc. and sold to Parallax Capital partners in 2001.

Vistasource now offers a freely available limited version for home users on Linux.