Open Source Engineering Software (WAS: Stress calculation)

For open source image manipulation/creation (similar to Photoshop) see The Gimp ( http://www.gimp.org/the_gimp_about.html ). Regarding Adobe products (including digital video editing), I'm pretty sure there's some open source activity going on there as well. There's a huge bug in the latest Adobe Acrobat Reader that causes it to not work in many cases - it can create thousands of tmp files and refuses to open - I had to scour Google to find the solution. But I'm getting off-topic.

For OSs, FEA solvers and CAD engines, I probably should have been more descriptive. Open source programs *are* copyrighted, but users can download them free of charge and can modify them to suit their own needs and share or sell the results as they see fit within the terms of the GPL ( http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html ). When I mentioned "underlying, basic calculations" I was referring to any calculation that you could do with pencil (or if you're REALLY good, pen) and paper, not the source code of the software.

I posted a question about this to Slashdot (mainly a computer tech website, but with hundreds of thousands of members, there are quite a few non-computer engineering types there also) and the link below is the current result:

http://ask.slashdot.org/askslashdot/03/12/19/0459232.shtml?tid=185

You can add a comment at the page linked above if you wish.

Paul
===

PS My summary of some of the available open source engineering-related software is below:

GNU Octave is a high-level language, primarily intended for numerical computations. It provides a convenient command line interface for solving linear and nonlinear problems numerically, and for performing other numerical experiments using a language that is mostly compatible with Matlab.
http://www.octave.org/

Gain new freedom for the development of 3D graphic modeling applications with industry-tested, open-source software: Open CASCADE brings benefits to all types of developers
http://www.opencascade.com/

The SystemC community consists of a large and growing number of system design companies, semiconductor companies, IP providers and EDA tool vendors. Many companies fit in more than one of these categories, but each category has its own compelling reasons for supporting SystemC as the standard C-based design language.
http://www.systemc.org/

Scilab is a scientific software package for numerical computations providing a powerful open computing environment for engineering and scientific applications. Developed since 1990 by researchers from INRIA and ENPC, it is now maintained and developed by Scilab Consortium since its creation in May 2003. Distributed freely via the Internet since 1994, Scilab is currently being used in educational and industrial environments around the world. http://scilabsoft.inria.fr/

• Original Message ----- From: "Christopher Wright"

> >I would suggest that commercial programs (as they exist now, the
"high-end"
> >stuff) are going to be on the way out within the next 10 years. This will
> >happen because of the increased usage of open source software running on
> >Linux.
> Not likely. It might happen that way if the users were the people
> responsible for buying software, but that's not the case in the
> enterprise market where the money is being made. Dedicated users may
> still do their own development, but the effort to develop large scale
> general purpose CAD and FEA software is too much for individual users. I
> can't imagine that any individually developed software could possibly
> replace Photoshop or Acrobat--the development is just too complex.
> Software used to be developed by users, just as pilots once built or
> oversaw the building of their own aircraft. But thos days are gone.
>
> >After all, the only proprietary bits about most software is the user
> >interface; it's not like the underlying, basic calculations are protected
by
> >copyright.
> This is flat wrong. FEA solvers and CAD graphic engines and operating
> systems, to name only three, are very much proprietary. Again, this might
> have been the case when the Apple II and MS-DOS were cutting edge, but
> not now.
Received on Fri Dec 19 20:52:00 2003