Talk:OpenFOAM

Article factually incorrect

My name is Hrvoje Jasak and I am one of the two original authors of the OpenFOAM code. This page has been specifically designed to exclude my contribution to the project and to attempt to re-write history to serve the commercial interest of Mr. Weller. This will need to be fixed.

I have started working on the FOAM code in September 1993 and the first versions of the code with my contributions exist in archives in December 1993, which can be recovered. I have since continuously worked on the code, including my time as the Technical Director of Nabla Ltd, a UK-based company which owned the Copyright to the code between 2000 and 2004. As references, see my PhD Thesis, which is still a premier reference to the OpenFOAM numerics and multiple publications from this period.

My contributions range from the first lines of blockMesh, parallelism, turbulence modelling, mesh handling (polyhedral) and many many more. At the time of the split of Nabla Ltd in Dec/2004, my contribution consisted of approx 30% of the complete code base, verifiably written personally by myself.

In 2004, the Copyright to the code has been illegally transferred from Nabla Ltd (in my co-ownership with Mr. Weller) to the new company OpenCFD Ltd, set up exclusively by Mr. Weller. This case of fraud has been reported to the Metropolitan Police at the time and the legal documentation still exists.

At the time, all my code authorship signatures, witnessing to my practical contribution to the code have been deleted by Mr. Weller; fortunately, the full source code for the final Nabla Ltd. version (foam-2.3.2, Dec/2004) still exists and is available for inspection.

I do not feel I am the right person to change the text of this article (due to a necessary lack of distance and objectivity); however, the article cannot remain in the current form.

Hrvoje Jasak — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A00:23C3:14BF:6400:1C33:254B:6176:C80A (talk) 18:17, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

Why marked as "like an advertisement"?

It's not more advertisement as the articles about MatLab or MS Office. I suggest the tag to be removed. 192.194.184.206 (talk) 10:59, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

I disagree. Though "advertisement" might be a bit strong, the bias is clear and totally pervasive. I don't think it would take too much to reword the existing article using a neutral point of view. I would also suggest an Advantages/Disadvantages section, particularly a word on what OpenFOAM cannot do that is well handled by other codes (commercial or open source). This might make the whole article be more balanced. Molienet (talk) 03:46, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

I started to clean it up a bit. Albertopa (talk) 01:44, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

I think the banner can now be removed. Please, let me know if you disagree. Alberto Passalacqua (talk) 05:32, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

There's a paragraph in History that talks about OpenFOAM being the first to do this and that... these are unsubstantiated, subjective claims... if they're true, I think they're wonderful, but we need to back them up. Marupio (talk) 16:37, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Forks

I think things might get a little heated over how much content to include for the forks. If we can learn from anyone, it's the MySQL community. They went through serious fragmentation. Now the main page is about MySQL, with a bullet list of forks, each with a paragraph description, and a link to their own page. I think we should borrow from this format, and keep the OpenFOAM page classy, and advertising-free. Marupio (talk) 22:32, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I agree. We should really keep an eye on advertisers: I cleaned up the page trying to make it neutral, and I would not like others, especially those who do not contribute a single line of code to the open releases of OF, use this page as advertisement for their professional services. Maybe we should specify what forks originated a publicly available release, and those who did not. --Alberto Passalacqua (talk) 05:29, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

I like that idea. Perhaps we could put non-public forks / adaptations into a heading "Commercial Adaptations of OpenFOAM"... I can think of Icon and Symscape for that. Also, I stumbled across freecfd... I wonder if we should list that as an alternative. I plan to make some of these changes soon. edit: done. Marupio (talk) 22:19, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

I'd like to propose a couple of section renames "Publicly available" to "Open Source" and "Not publicly available" to "Closed Source". I've added a reference to OpenFlow to clarify that the Windows OpenFOAM components in blueCFD are derived from OpenFlow. Also I have clarified the relationship between Symscape, Caedium and OpenFOAM. Full disclosure: I represent Symscape. Syguy (talk) 21:56, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

I agree with the sentiment, but all of them would then fall into the category "Open Source". Any fork of OpenFOAM that isn't open source cannot be distributed, or violates GNU GPL 2. I originally created the two categories because commercial interests were polluting the entire article, (unlike the way you made your changes). So the idea was to have all the forks listed at the bottom, and to separate them "Free" from "Not Free". I think we could consider combining them into one category of "Forks," but I feel it's important that the reader can tell which are free and which are not. Also, the distributions they list should be alphabetical to avoid any implied ranking. I've reworked it a little. Currently I've listed Caedium and OpenFlow as separate items, but this might be a bad idea, as other companies may have a diverse OpenFOAM-related product line that they would want represented that way as well. Let me know what you think! Marupio (talk) 15:19, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

One more thing - I think that the "Capabilities" and the "Structure of OpenFOAM" sections are a little tedious in their current form. I'd love to rework them when I have time. Marupio (talk) 15:19, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

I see what you are saying with "Free Software" and "Software available for purchase". However, I think there's a more distinct line to be drawn. I can speak to OpenFlow and Caedium RANS Flow. OpenFlow is a derivative of OpenFOAM and therefore licensed under the GPL - though you can buy the binaries as a convenience the source code is freely available to anyone. As I understand it blueCFD falls within the same category as OpenFlow. Caedium RANS Flow is closed source that uses (runs) OpenFOAM solvers in separate processes, so it doesn't fall under the GPL. In terms of closed source 'using' OpenFOAM I believe CastNet and the GUI portion of FOAMpro fall within the same category as Caedium. Caedium and others in that category are not forks, and hence my suggestion to categorize according to Open Source and Closed Source. On further thought maybe it's worth considering a "Derived Works" section rather than forks - I don't consider OpenFlow a fork - and then a "Complimentary Software" section for the GUI/Pre-Processor/Post-Processor-like applications. So for the time being I've put OpenFlow back in the free software section. Syguy (talk) 14:21, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

The forks section includes SwiftBlock and SwiftSnap. In my opinion those those are great community *addons*, in contrast to large forks/adaptions such as FreeFoam, Helyx, etc. Thus, I plead for them to be removed from that section. Ankid (talk) 06:30, 29 June 2013 (UTC)