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OpenRadioss is not open anymore

20 points · 20 comments · hdrz

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hdrz · 1790891366 · focus · HN ↗
Until recently it was under AGPL. It was open sourced in 2022, and now siemens bought altair (the company who developed it for many years) and closed it again. Some of us cared and contributed, and now it’s gone… Maybe this can continue under another name using the last source release?
1. kragen · 1790892099 · focus · HN ↗
  Yes, it can. Do you have a copy?
  1. hdrz · 1790892389 · focus · HN ↗
    Probably, but not the last one, maybe from some months ago
    kragen · 1790892453 · focus · HN ↗
    That's better than luban-2022's copy I linked above, which is from 02024.
    kragen · 1790901263 · focus · HN ↗
    But see <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49928579">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49928579.
  2. mindcrime · 1790893373 · focus · HN ↗
    Either of these relevant?
    <a href="https://github.com/QiangF/OpenRadioss_nolfs" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/QiangF/OpenRadioss_nolfs
    <a href="https://github.com/Lucyants/OpenRadioss" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/Lucyants/OpenRadioss
    kragen · 1790901411 · focus · HN ↗
    Unclear, maybe, but see <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49928579">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49928579.
2. diggernet · 1790892145 · focus · HN ↗
  Looks like they've made <a href="https://github.com/OpenRadioss/OpenRadioss" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/OpenRadioss/OpenRadioss private to make that harder to do. But hopefully someone out there has a recent clone of the repo.
  1. puetzk · 1790892971 · focus · HN ↗
    If you know when it was deleted, you should be able to find the last-pushed hashes in <a href="https://www.gharchive.org/" rel="nofollow">https://www.gharchive.org/, and then can likely still fetch those hashes via any surviving fork - even if it doesn't look up-to-date (since github commingles the actual pack storage underneath forks).
3. CBLT · 1790892281 · focus · HN ↗
  > Some of us cared and contributed
  Under a CLA.
jacquesm · 1790891532 · focus · HN ↗
I hope someone still has a copy and can put it up on github. Siemens just gained themselves a place on my shitlist for this action and I sincerely hope the industry will call them out for it.
kragen · 1790892399 · focus · HN ↗
It looks like there are some AGPL copies on Software Heritage, such as <a href="https://archive.softwareheritage.org/browse/origin/directory/?origin_url=https://github.com/luban-2022/OpenRadioss&visit_type=git" rel="nofollow">https://archive.softwareheritage.org/browse/origin/directory..., which mysteriously has gone missing from GitHub itself.
There are a few different open-source finite element solvers available, but I don't know enough about them to know what their strengths and weaknesses are. Coincidentally, over the last day, I've been vibecoding a multiphysics engine for sand battery design... on a grid rather than using FEM, although I'm starting to wonder if FEM would start to pay off at this point, because a thin fiberglass blanket around the outside of the sand battery seems to make a big difference, but reducing the grid grain to the thickness of the blanket would suck pretty bad.
1. kragen · 1790901281 · focus · HN ↗
  See <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49928579">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49928579 for a live clone.
hackerfoo · 1790893830 · focus · HN ↗
I found this: <a href="https://github.com/QiangF/OpenRadioss_nolfs" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/QiangF/OpenRadioss_nolfs Here's an older one that fails because it needs LFS: <a href="https://github.com/Lucyants/OpenRadioss.git" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/Lucyants/OpenRadioss.git
jacquesm · 1790898418 · focus · HN ↗
Some of these are still alive:
<a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20251202100620/https://github.com/OpenRadioss/OpenRadioss/forks" rel="nofollow">http://web.archive.org/web/20251202100620/https://github.com...
1. kragen · 1790901008 · focus · HN ↗
  I tried half a dozen from the list you found, and <a href="https://github.com/AxelHaenschke/OpenRadioss" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/AxelHaenschke/OpenRadioss was the only one that showed up, and it seems to have some updates from a couple of months ago. I've put a copy up at <a href="http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/OpenRadioss.git" rel="nofollow">http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/OpenRadioss.git. You should be able to clone it from there in about 30 seconds, but be aware it's 176 megs.
  1. jacquesm · 1790908971 · focus · HN ↗
    Yes, apologies, I had something a lot more urgent to do but still made the time to dig up the info and post the link. You're welcome.
  2. complex_fir_rea · 1790912719 · focus · HN ↗
    <a href="https://github.com/MatAnMuc/OpenRadioss" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/MatAnMuc/OpenRadioss
    This copy of the repository is more recent, last commit was made in Sep. 3, 2026 (1 month ago).
    kragen · 1790958388 · focus · HN ↗
    I've snarfed it; I'll take a look.
spartaguy · 1790901516 · focus · HN ↗
[dead]
nejch · 1790942096 · focus · HN ↗
As a Siemens employee this is so sad to watch. Some of us have been pushing hard for more open source culture at the company and it's disheartening hitting setbacks like this.
Anyways.. here's a supported open source fork already. Didn't take long: <a href="https://opencourant.org/" rel="nofollow">https://opencourant.org/ <a href="https://github.com/OpenCourant/OpenCourant/" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/OpenCourant/OpenCourant/
1. hdrz · 1790966860 · focus · HN ↗
  I am very happy to see this, a continuation under the stewardship of rocky linux. I really hope it takes off and continues with force and velocity… I intend to help if I can.

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