Open source packages feature libraries and tools, and is available for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X ActiveState this week added open source packages for financial and scientific computing to its ActivePython distribution of the Python programming language.The move is being made as a result of growing demand for Python in heavy data-centric scientific computing and financial modeling applications, the company said. The packages are being offered partially in response to proposed rules about asset-backed securities from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.“Python’s extensibility and interoperability with other programming languages and numerical libraries makes it an increasingly popular choice in both the financial and scientific computing communities,” said Diane Mueller, director of enterprise product management at ActiveState, in a statement released by the company. “ActiveState offers the most robust Python distribution and service levels agreements for companies demanding efficiencies and high performance required in today’s increasingly complex computing environments.” The three packages include:NumPy, providing a library for financial and scientific computing with Python and featuring an N-dimensional array object, advanced array slicing methods, array reshaping methods, and other capabilitiesSciPy, a suite for scientific tools for Python that is dependent on the NumPy library matplotlib, a Python numerical plotting library offering 2D numerical plotting functionalityDevelopers, traders, quantitative analysts, scientists, and engineers can use the packages to build data-intensive mathematical computing applications for financial modeling and scientific analysis of complex data, ActivePython said.The three packages are available for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X in the business, enterprise, and OEM editions of ActivePython 2.6 and 2.7. This article, “ActiveState bolsters Python with financial and scientific capabilities,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Follow the latest developments in business technology news and get a digest of the key stories each day in the InfoWorld Daily newsletter and on your mobile device at infoworldmobile.com. Software Development