After Siemens Re-Licenses OpenRadioss, Rocky Linux Announces Open-Source Fork (phoronix.com)
- Reference: 0186025666
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/10/05/0451252/after-siemens-re-licenses-openradioss-rocky-linux-announces-open-source-fork
- Source link: https://www.phoronix.com/news/OpenRadioss-OpenCourant
- Siemens acquired Altair Engineering last year
- Siemens closes access to OpenRadioss.
"Siemens didn't just end the project but they shutdown the GitHub repository that hosted the open-source code and removed other resources that had built around it," [2]writes Phoronix , before announcing a [3]new open-source community fork :
> Radioss has been an industry-leading solver for analyzing crashes, blasts, and other purposes. Altair creating OpenRadioss was a huge milestone for the technical computing industry. It also had other effects like for myself in finally being able to benchmark with this (Open)Radioss code for CPU performance testing compared to the expensive licensing on Radioss itself...
>
> Siemens [4]argues the OpenRadioss closure is for consolidating efforts:
>
> "After four years of successful community-driven research, Siemens is entering a new chapter for the Radioss solver. To accelerate innovation and provide the robust support our global users require for production-grade simulation, we are consolidating our efforts."
It was Brian Clemens. founder/VP Rocky Linux and the Rocky Enterprise Software Foundation who launched the community fork of OpenRadioss — to be called OpenCourant. [5]Its web site announces they'll be "carrying forward the OpenRadioss code base under the GNU AGPL, in the open, where it belongs."
[6]Phoronix writes in a follow-up :
> OpenCourant is based on the last publicly known open-source OpenRadioss snapshot before Siemens shut it down and removed access to the Git repository... OpenCourant continues with the OpenRadioss GNI AGPLv3 licensing and will be run as part of the Rocky Enterprise Software Foundation. They have run into a small issue though with part of OpenRadioss consisting of binary dependencies and not having the very latest versions prior to Siemens' removal of the repository. Details on that via [7]this discussion thread for anyone that happens to have recent OpenRadioss binaries.
In other open source news, Kagi is ending their development work on the Orion Browser for Linux and Windows, [8]reports the site Linuxiac — but Kagi "plans to open-source both versions so other developers or organizations can keep them going."
[1] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Siemens-Ends-OpenRadioss
[2] https://www.phoronix.com/news/OpenRadioss-OpenCourant
[3] https://opencourant.org/
[4] https://www.siemens.com/en-us/products/simcenter/mechanical-simulation/radioss/rd/
[5] https://opencourant.org/
[6] https://www.phoronix.com/news/OpenRadioss-OpenCourant
[7] https://github.com/OpenCourant/OpenCourant/discussions/10
[8] https://linuxiac.com/kagi-ends-orion-browser-development-for-linux-will-open-source-it/
Hostile forks ftw (Score:3)
I had an idea a while back of launching an org called "Hostile Fork" that basically gets these hostile de-FOSSings and relaunches them from the last known FOSS commit, stripping out all the anti user shit (user limits for "community" versions etc), de-branding them and trying to find new maintainers. This was in response to almost every non relational database I used succumbing to management bullshit and going closed source, or using the GPL as shareware by locking important functions behind "license checks" (motherfuckers if you put that license check in GPL code I *am* entitled to remove it). Im still bitter about ArangoDB
In the end, I have neither the time resources to put into it, or the money/legal resources to defend it. But I still think it'd be a great idea.
What about the open source contributions to date? (Score:2)
If it were open source and someone cared enough to fork it, then presumably there are open licensed contribution to the repo that Siemens won't own the copyright to.
What happens to those? Can they be taken closed source at all?
Re: (Score:2)
Depends if they ever accepted any merge requests, I guess.
The cynic in me suggests this might be the primary motivation for them completely deleting the repo.
Corpospeak... (Score:2)
> To accelerate innovation and provide the robust support our global users require for production-grade simulation, we are consolidating our efforts.
Translation: We are looking at our options on how to extract as much money as possible from the users of this software.
Re: (Score:2)
> Translation: We are looking at our options on how to extract as much money as possible from the users of this software.
Or: We eliminated the positions necessary to merge the changes coming from the outside, and we will support the customers in house, if there are any paying customers at all. After that, we will close the project for good.