LibMesh

Vignette Author: John Peterson (jwpeterson@gmail.com)
Relationship to project: Developer and user 2002-present

Project home page: https://github.com/libMesh/libmesh, libmesh.sf.net

- What does this software do?

The LibMesh library provides a framework for the numerical simulation
of partial differential equations using arbitrary unstructured
discretizations on serial and parallel platforms. A major goal of the
library is to provide support for adaptive mesh refinement (AMR)
computations in parallel while allowing a research scientist to focus
on the physics they are modeling.

- What is the license?

LGPL version 2.1

- BRIEF history of the project, including funding sources?

Began at the University of Texas at Austin by Benjamin Kirk and a few
of Professor Graham Carey's graduate students.  Has never been
directly funded, but a number of researchers at Idaho National
Laboratory, the University of Texas, and NASA Johnson Space Center are
funded to work on projects closely related to LibMesh.  The PECOS
center at the University of Texas was funded for five years on an NNSA
Predictive Science Academic Alliance Program project based around
LibMesh.

- Are there commercial derivatives?  What form do they take?  Are
  companies making money off of derivative works?

No known commercial derivatives, but commerical companies are using
LibMesh, see below.

- Are there commercial packages that depend on or otherwise make use of this?

Akselos (akselos.com) makes a commercial software product which is
based on the reduced basis technology available in LibMesh.

- Are there companies using this package to develop new technology of
  any kind?  Please give specific examples if possible.

Yes, see comment above about Akselos.  They are a start-up company
based in Boston, MA and currently target customers in the mining, oil
& gas, and power systems industries with simulation capabilities
based on what they call the "Reduced Basis Component Technology."

- Are there closed-source competitors or alternatives to this?  Please
  compare and contrast this OSS to these on all relevant axes.

Not really.  The capabilities LibMesh provides are somewhat similar to
Comsol, but the target audiences are fairly different (developer/user
vs. GUI-based end user).  There are many high-quality open source
finite element libraries available, however, including deal.II,
FEniCS, GetFEM++, and others.