About Genworks International

Company History

Genworks International, operating as a d.b.a. of Knowledge Based Solutions (a Michigan Corporation), was founded in 1997 to provide advanced knowledge-based engineering solutions. For over 27 years, we have continuously refined and evolved Genworks GDL—a declarative language that captures engineering knowledge as executable code.

Since 2002, Genworks GDL has powered mission-critical applications at Fortune 500 companies across aerospace, automotive, and manufacturing industries. Our commitment to long-term stability and multi-generational code longevity sets us apart in an industry often focused on short-term trends.

Open Source Leadership

In 2011, Genworks made the strategic decision to open-source the GDL kernel as the Gendl Project, released under the AGPL license. This decision reflects our belief in the power of community collaboration while maintaining commercial offerings for enterprise needs.

The Gendl open-source kernel serves as a funnel for education, research, and community building, while Genworks GDL Commercial Edition provides the AGPL exceptions, industrial components, and support that production deployments require.

Partnership Ecosystem

Genworks is built on a foundation of established partnerships that ensure long-term stability and support continuity:

• •
  Franz Inc Partnership — Genworks is built on Franz Allegro Common Lisp, continuously supported since 1984. We maintain support continuity agreements with Franz to address "bus factor" concerns.
• •
  HarmonyWare Integration — Expert CAD I/O vendor providing STEP and IGES translation with deep SMLib integration expertise.
• •
  SMLib NURBS Kernel — Pre-NVIDIA acquisition license for the long-renowned solid modeling kernel, ensuring stability independent of corporate acquisitions.
• •
  Common Lisp Community — Active participation in the global Common Lisp ecosystem ensures access to decades of collective knowledge and ongoing language evolution.

Why Choose Genworks?

In an era of rapid technological change and corporate consolidation, Genworks offers something rare: genuine multi-generational stability. Our foundation on ANSI Common Lisp (standardized in 1994) means code written today will likely run unchanged in 2075.

We're not chasing venture capital or building for acquisition. We're building for longevity—enabling engineering organizations to invest in knowledge capture systems that will serve them for decades, not just quarters.