PyMOL

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PyMOL

A PyMOL instance, with the Viewer and GUI visible.
Original author(s)	Warren Lyford DeLano
Developer(s)	Schrödinger, Inc.
Initial release	2000; 24 years ago (2000)
Stable release	2.5.5[1] / 17 April 2023; 13 months ago (2023-04-17)
Repository	github.com/schrodinger/pymol-open-source
Written in	C, C++, Python
Operating system	Cross-platform: macOS, Unix, Linux, Windows
Platform	IA-32, x86-64
Available in	English
Type	Molecular modelling
License	Originally the Python License,[2] now proprietary[3]
Website	pymol.org/2/

PyMOL is a source-available^[3] molecular visualization system created by Warren Lyford DeLano. It was commercialized initially by DeLano Scientific LLC, which was a private software company dedicated to creating useful tools that become universally accessible to scientific and educational communities. It is currently commercialized by Schrödinger, Inc. As the original software license was a permissive licence, they were able to remove it; new versions are no longer released under the Python license, but under a custom license (granting broad use, redistribution, and modification rights, but assigning copyright to any version to Schrödinger, LLC.),^[3] and some of the source code is no longer released.^[4] PyMOL can produce high-quality 3D images of small molecules and biological macromolecules, such as proteins. According to the original author, by 2009, almost a quarter of all published images of 3D protein structures in the scientific literature were made using PyMOL.^{[citation needed]}

PyMOL is one of the few mostly open-source model visualization tools available for use in structural biology. The Py part of the software's name refers to the program having been written in the programming language Python.

PyMOL uses OpenGL Extension Wrangler Library (GLEW) and FreeGLUT, and can solve Poisson–Boltzmann equations using the Adaptive Poisson Boltzmann Solver.^[5] PyMOL used Tk for the GUI widgets and had native Aqua binaries for macOS through Schrödinger, which were replaced with a PyQt user interface on all platforms with the release of version 2.0.^[6]