This is the Geneva optimization library. As the name suggests
-- it stands for "Grid-enabled evolutionary algorithms" --, it
aims to provide the necessary tools to perform parametric optimization
in parallel on devices ranging from multi-processor machines over
clusters all the way to Grid- and Cloud-installations.

Meanwhile, further optimization algorithms have been added beyond "mere"
evolutionary algorithms, such as swarm algorithms, simulated annealing 
and a simple form of gradient descents. Further algorithms will be added 
over time, and the existing algorithms will be further improved.

All algorithms act on the same problem definitions, and different 
optimization algorithms can interact and may be "chained", making it 
easy to tackle even complicated problems. Parallelization (on the level
of optimization algorithms) happens mostly transparently for the user. 

Geneva does not want to be the fastest library of optimization
algorithms on single-processor machines, but is instead targeted at
large scale problems, where the evaluation of a single individual will
typically take longer than a few seconds.

Geneva is made available as an Open Source software, under the Apache
License, version 2.0. External contributions to the code are very
welcome, and indeed we make this code available in the hope that it
will not only be useful, but will also encourage users to let us know
about bugs or suggest or even implement features they would want to
see in Geneva.

To users and programmers wishing to contribute to this software, the
terms of the Apache License guarantee the continued availability of
the code under this license.

Geneva is maintained by Gemfony scientific. To find out more about
Gemfony and/or Geneva, visit http://www.gemfony.eu or contact us
through contact (AT) gemfony (DOT) eu .