Who Are We?

Decimus Software was formed in 2003 when Ben Rister decided to adopt a snazzy piece of software named Synk which had been left unsupported when its previous author, Randall Voth, moved on to bigger and better things. After a few maintenance updates to address urgent needs, a total rewrite of the software was released as Synk 5. The Synk 6 line of products was released in June of 2006, featuring the revolutionary new ZeroScan technology.

In recent times, Decimus has been diversifying beyond the Synk products. DTerm was released in January of 2008, and in March 2008, Decimus acquired Polarian Technologies, including Screen Mimic. Work continues eternally on new product ideas as well as major and minor upgrades to our existing products.

We feel that the "personal touch" has been tragically missing from the industry lately, and are doing our best to bring it back through staying personally visible where possible and through prompt and personal responses to emails. We remain obsessively dedicated to the design and business philosophies that have earned us the affections of our users, and hope to continue to delight all of you for years to come. Do feel free to get in touch anytime you like—we're just these ordinary guys, trying to make ends meet doing something we love.

Benjamin D. Rister, President/Janitor

A Mac user since the days of the Mac Plus in the mid-80s, he's been developing software for the Mac for nearly as long. Ben previously started a game development tools company out of his college dorm room that turned out as what one might affectionately call a "learning experience." However, he clearly did not learn the pains of multitasking entrepreneurship well enough, as he later founded Decimus Software while in the Ph.D. program at Carnegie Mellon, to try to do something about the significant student loans that are the unfortunate consequence of being a chronic academic. (And as he is recently married, he especially encourages you to purchase Decimus's products so that he can work on paying off the wedding, too!)

When not hunched over a computer, Ben can be frequently found on the racquetball court, hunched over a Go board (he's ex-president of the Pittsburgh Go Association), dancing Argentine tango, or showing off his impressively bad flick playing Ultimate. At home, he cooks a lot of good stuff and is a bit of a movie buff, with an emphasis on film scores. You should not get him started on green chile.

Rob Rix, Avatar of Correctness

Very dangerous over short distances

An avid fan of behaviour-driven development, it's Rob Rix's job to tell Ben that he, Ben, is wrong, but not so loudly that he, Rob, gets fired for it. He's here to stress-test, pressure-treat, analyze, and empirically prove the code, and to improve the workflow in favour of more reliable products.

In addition, if you need support, you'll probably be talking to Rob, and if you've got a bug report, he'll be trying his best to reproduce it.

In past lives, Rob has been a freelance writer, prepress technician, graphic designer, web developer, consultant, photographer, entrepreneur, sysadmin, and anything else that happened by—and he's also had some hobbies. These days he lives to code, and codes in southern Ontario with his wife Kelly, and their cats, Max and Pixel. (Pixel writes his documentation.)

Michael De Rosa, Alumnus

Mike De Rosa was a colleague of Ben's at Carnegie Mellon, and is guilty of much of the implementation of the Synk 6 user interface. He's now focusing on getting his thesis done.

Other Business Associates

We often use contractors and freelancers as needed during development; here's some of them:

Matthew Seigel: UI design
Mischa McLachlan: Icon/graphic design
Rory Prior: Website/icon/graphic design
Linda Griffith, Dave Hardin, Larry Robinson: Accounting/business support