The cost of sustaining OpenFOAM is currently € 250k per year.  With well over 10,000 users of OpenFOAM, that’s less than € 25 per user per year.  Compare that to some single-user licences of commercial CFD software that are 1000 times more expensive!

OpenFOAM cannot be funded through individual donations since fewer than 1% of people generally donate to something that they can otherwise obtain for free.  Instead, organisations with commercial dependence on OpenFOAM should contribute to the cost of sustaining it.

The OpenFOAM Foundation provides Maintenance Plans for organisations to support sustainability.  There are three levels of Plan: Gold (€ 20k per year); Silver (€ 5k); and, Bronze (€ 1k).  The funding supports a full-time team of core developers with combined skills in software design, programming, numerics, science and engineering, mainly at CFD Direct (including OpenFOAM’s creator, Henry Weller).

Find out more about Maintenance Plans