Business
Fluid flow computing company goes open-source
Software that can, say, help make cars aerodynamic is no longer proprietary.
Developers of software for simulating fluid flow such as automobile aerodynamics have decided to make their program open-source. The software, called FOAM (Field Operation And Manipulation), previously was a proprietary product, but its developers decided in December to release the software in an open-source project called OpenFOAM.
FOAM creator Henry Weller in 2004 founded a company, OpenCFD, to sell consulting and support services for OpenFOAM. The software employs the Message Passing Interface (MPI) software that lets independent computers in a cluster cooperate on a single computing task. OpenFOAM is covered under the General Public License (GPL).