The QuantLib project is aimed to provide a comprehensive software framework for quantitative finance. The goal is to provide a standard free/open source library to quantitative analysts and developers for modeling, trading, and risk management in real-life. QuantLib plans to offer tools that are useful for both practical implementation, with features such as market conventions, solvers, PDEs, etc., and advanced modeling, e.g., exotic options and interest rate models. QuantLib is meant to be used by academics and practitioners alike, eventually promoting a stronger interaction between the two. Finance is one area where well-written open-source projects could make a tremendous difference. Almost every financial institution needs a solid, time-effective, operative implementation of leading-edge pricing models and hedging tools. However, to get there, currently one is forced to re-invent the wheel every time. Even decade-old models with no market value, such as Black-Scholes formula (1973), still lack a standard implementation. As a consequences many good quants are wasting their time writing C++ classes which have been already written thousands of times.