Overview on the different OF-players like "CFD Direct" or OpenCFD Ltd (ESI Group)
 

Dear all,

can someone enlighten me, i think i lost overview

I remember that ESI Group purchased OpenCFD Ltd. and was/(is) the trademark owner OF-Trademark.
There is OpenFOAM Foundation lead by Henry Weller(working now at "CFD Direct"), Chris Greenshields(working now at "CFD Direct") and Cristel de Rouvray (working at "ESI Group")

So there are now two Companies "CFD Direct" and "OpenCFD Ltd./ESI Group" that both develop OF-Code base that belongs to OpenFOAM Foundation !?

Greetings Elvis,

OK, let's review what's known to the public:

1. Non-profit foundations that deliver open-source software usually have this sort of structure, where companies pay an X amount of money per year, in order to be part of the Foundation and for being part of the development or at least they act as sponsors for someone to get the job done. Furthermore, sometimes those companies actually do have people working directly in those companies that work (almost) exclusively to push forward the work covered by the foundation.
   A few examples I can remember about:
   • Linux Foundation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Foundation
   • Apache OpenOffice: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_OpenOffice
2. The OpenFOAM Foundation currently states on their website the following:
   
   Quote:

   Originally Posted by http://www.openfoam.org The Foundation is based in the UK and has a governance structure that includes the following groups. Financial Membership for organisations that pay a fee to fund the Foundation and participate in the evolution of the software. Contributing Membership for individuals that make a significant personal contribution to OpenFOAM, for the public good. Technical Committees, that participate in software management, such as model implementation, testing and validation.

   • In other words: CFD Direct and ESI are essentially members of the Foundation, since they are covering (one way or another) the current costs of development of OpenFOAM.
3. OpenFOAM 2.3.1 was released on the 10th anniversary of OpenFOAM (10th of December 2014). If you check a few posts of mine, I wrote down a few of the changes that were publicly noticeable: http://www.cfd-online.com/Forums/ope...tml#post523262 - see posts #6, #7 and #9.
4. On the 15th of December, a few days later, a new "OpenFOAM-dev" repository was made available and since then, they have been more open to accepting public contributions. If you check the comments of many of the commits, you'll find in the comment of the commit, who contributed to the particular commit.
5. Recently, CFD Direct was made public on the 25th of March, 2015 (check their twitter feed!?). And on this page: http://cfd.direct/openfoam/ - they have documented most of the details that are known publicly at this moment:
   
   Quote:

   In 2014, Henry Weller and Chris Greenshields left ESI Group to continue management and development of OpenFOAM as Directors of both CFD Direct and the Foundation.

   And a bit after that:
   
   Quote:

   CFD Direct was founded by people who share a belief in open source software and have a mission to make CFD accessible and inclusive. Through our management and development of OpenFOAM, we are producing software that: allows access to the implementation of scientific knowledge; allows access for those who could not otherwise afford it; encourages collaboration and advancement; covers as many CFD applications as possible.

6. http://openfoam.com on the other hand, has had its sign "OpenFOAM Team is Recruiting, Apply Now" up since... let me check their twitter... since the 20th of October, 2014: https://twitter.com/openfoam/status/524132116964319232
7. I have yet to find any page on the ESI Group website that gives any details on what's going on in specific. And only today did I find out that their GUI finally has a proper name and it's named "Visual-CFD"... apparently I'm very outdated, because a brochure for it was published back on the 8th of July 2014: http://www.esi-group.com/resources/v...d-applications
8. Which reminds me... there is this comment on a bug report: http://www.openfoam.org/mantisbt/view.php?id=1353#c3164
   
   Quote:

   You are trying to install on Ubuntu 14.04. We don't have packs for that yet, but will have packs in version 2.3.1, due to be released in a few days.

   This was written on the 21st of July, 2014. Said packs were only made available on the 10th of December, 2014.
9. OpenCFD (ESI Group) still owns the two trade marks: http://openfoam.com/legal/trademark-policy.php
10. People working at OpenCFD do continue to give comments on the bug tracker and provide the occasional patch. From what I've seen, Henry Weller is who handles the commit to the 2.3.x and -dev repositories. Which seems similar to how Linus Torvalds handles the development of the Linux Kernel for each major release.
11. OpenCFD continues to be very active in delivering training sessions (check their twitter feed), therefore it seems that it continues to go forward as well.

And for those who are wondering what the "OpenFOAM-dev" repository is for, check this post of mine: http://www.cfd-online.com/Forums/ope...tml#post537720 - post #2


So, what does this all mean? Well, from my point of view, it seems that OpenFOAM will continue to go forward as open-source software, under the GNU General Public License v3.

Furthermore, I see this as a chance to commence work in bridging things between foam-extend and OpenFOAM... which at the current rate, will likely still take another 5-10 years... if not more... :rolleyes:

Best regards,
Bruno


PS: And do any of you remember "Star Trek: The Next Generation"? Because all of this reminds me of their ship's ability to split into two: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Ent...cer_separation

Hi,

But know we have a openFOAM release 1606+ on www.openfoam.com and www.openfoam.org just released version 4.1... Does someone understand the different releases?

Ruud

Quick answer:

1. OpenFOAM 4.1 is a patch release of 4.0, which was in turn released on the 28th of June 2016. Being a patch release, means that only bugs were fixed.
2. OpenFOAM+ v1606+ was released on the 30th of June 2016 and quoting from the release notes: http://openfoam.com/version-v1606+/
   
   Quote:

   Includes all Foundation code changes to commit level 449a9ec 21-04-2016

   The reason why it is based on an older development snapshot is simple:
   1. At OpenCFD-ESI, they need to run test loops that take around 1 month to run, therefore they need time to do quality assurance for their clients.
   2. They also need time to merge their development line with the one at the OpenFOAM Foundation. It's currently done in chunks (once every 6 months or so, if I'm not mistaken), instead of steadily keeping up with the Foundation's development line.

In comparison, OpenFOAM 4.0 has a faster test loop, which is why it's based on a commit from 4 days before it was released.


For more details and discussing on what's going, please go to this thread: http://www.cfd-online.com/Forums/ope...am-v3-0-a.html

What is what and who is who in the OpenFOAM environment?
 

The following link makes the differences between different branches ( OpenFoam(original), OpenFoam+ (ESI),Foam-extend,...) much more clear.

What is what and who is who in the OpenFOAM environment?