Overview

OpenFOAM was first released as open source by OpenCFD Ltd. in 2004. Since that time it has matured to become the leading open source software for Computational Fluid Dynamics. We continue today as the core entity promoting its open, collaborative and progressive development and maintenance, with the declared long-term support of partners in industry, academia and key individuals.

The wider user-base for OpenFOAM has grown steadily and produced valuable functionality to complement the official releases. It has not been clear, until now, how to feed these developments back into the official release to take advantage of a wider audience, maintenance, testing and quality-assurance.

The key to OpenFOAM’s future is bringing the Community together to participate within a welcoming, co-operative framework, ensuring the project’s longevity and maintaining its core values of being freely-available and open-source. For this purpose, ESI-OpenCFD with its partners have together launched the Official structure for OpenFOAM Governance on 23th October 2018.

Organisation

The structure of OpenFOAM Governance consists of a Steering Committee and Technical Committees.

The Steering Committee comprises representatives from OpenFOAM’s main sponsors in Industry, Academia, Release Authorities and Consultant Organisations. Membership requires a declared alignment to the Offical OpenFOAM release and the project’s core objectives.

The Technical Committees cover all the key focus areas for OpenFOAM development; they assess the state-of-the-art, need and status for validation, documentation and further development. Technical Committee Chairs are nominated and ratified by the Steering Committee for a three-year term with a small bursary to support the effort and overheads associated with coordination. Membership in each Technical Committee is open to all, and bound by the Code of Conduct.

How to get involved

OpenFOAM Governance has been established to enable OpenFOAM users the opportunity to share in the future development and direction of OpenFOAM. See how you can get involved...

Governance documents

Additional resources supporting OpenFOAM Governance. Find out more...