MOOSE

Vignette Author: John Peterson (jwpeterson@gmail.com)
Relationship to project: Developer and user 2011-present

Project home page: http://mooseframework.org

- What does this software do?

Winner of a 2014 R&D100 award, the Multiphysics Object-Oriented
Simulation Environment (MOOSE) is a finite element, multiphysics
simulation framework primarily developed by Idaho National
Laboratory. It provides a high-level interface to sophisticated
nonlinear solvers, and presents a straightforward API that aligns with
real-world science and engineering applications.

- What is the license?

LGPL version 2.1

- BRIEF history of the project, including funding sources?

Began at Idaho National Laboratory in 2008 with Laboratory Directed
Research and Development (LDRD) funding.  Instrumental in attracting
DOE programmatic funding (NEAMS, CASL) to the INL.

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

No known commercial derivatives.

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

Not yet.

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

Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research
Organisation (CSIRO) is actively developing MOOSE-based applications
in several areas, including mining, groundwater, and basic
geomechanics simulations.  Numerous other partners within the DOE
complex and Universities are also using MOOSE.

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

Comsol, Ansys, Abaqus, and Fluent are established commercial software
packages that have various multiphysics simulation capabilities.
These codes provide "pre-defined" capabilities for the most part,
whereas MOOSE is based on the idea that the user will write custom
software to support his particular application, if it does not already
exist.