The current package is based on a code which was originally developed at the University of Graz within the EU Research and Training Network EXC!TiNG, copyright by Kay Dewhurst, Sangeeta Sharma, and Claudia Ambrosch-Draxl. Beta releases had been available under the gpl license at source forge.
In 2009, the code has split into two branches. exciting was primarily developed in the group of Claudia Ambrosch-Draxl at the University of Leoben (until March 2012), with contributions from a project carried out at the University Graz (until November 2011) and from the Materials Center Leoben (until March 2012). The second branch, named ELK, is being developed by Kay Dewhurst and Sangeeta Sharma in the group of Hardy Gross at the Max-Planck Institute in Halle.
We want to thank at this point everyone who has contributed to one of the previous versions. A list of names can be found here.
Since November 2011, the exciting headquater is moving to the Physics Institute of the Humboldt-Universität Berlin. The current developers team from various places is highly motivated to provide a powerful innovative package to the electronic-structure community.