The Computational Crystallography Toolbox (cctbx) is being developed
as the open source component of the PHENIX system. The goal of the
PHENIX project is to advance automation of macromolecular structure
determination. PHENIX depends on the cctbx, but not vice versa.
This hierarchical approach enforces a clean design as a reusable library.
The cctbx is therefore also useful for small-molecule crystallography
and even general scientific applications.
To maximize reusability and, maybe even more importantly, to give
individual developers a notion of privacy, the cctbx is organized as a
set of smaller modules. This is very much like a village (the cctbx
project) with individual houses (modules) for each family (groups of
developers, of any size including one).
The cctbx code base is available without restrictions and free of charge
to all interested developers, both academic and commercial.
The entire community is invited to actively participate in the
development of the code base. A sophisticated technical infrastructure
that enables community based software development is provided by
SourceForge. This service is also free of charge and open to
the entire world.