Sandia Releases DAKOTA Toolkit under GPL

Consul writes " DAKOTA, a powerful toolkit for doing engineering analysis, has now been released under the GPL. Space Daily has the details about the tookkit."

Addendum to the article post

[Consul]

As the submitter of this article, I'm afraid I missed a couple of important things.

First, here's a link to the site for the software itself: DAKOTA [sandia.gov]

And second, as seen on this page [sandia.gov], there are two libraries (DOT and NPSOL) required by DAKOTA that are expensive commercial software products. So, in order to make DAKOTA truly free, these libraries will need to be replaced with GPL/LGPL equivilants. I just wish I had the programming skill to help with something of this scale.

There is a third library needed, called OPT++, that is not GPL or an Artistic license. I'm unable to determine what this library is or its terms of use, as the page that the DAKOTA web site links to is no good.

All of the other libraries needed by DAKOTA are GPL/LGPL, with one using an Artistic license.

Damnit, You _Can_ Sell GPL Software

[John Hasler]

'"The only restriction is that people cannot take the DAKOTA software, change it, and then sell it," Eldred says.'

If it is under the GPL they most certainly can. They are merely required to license their version to their customers under the GPL.

Re:Addendum to the article post

[cmowire]

Yeah, but it doesn't NEED DOT and NPSOL to work, it can work with the other libraries.

I bet it sucks without them, tho. ;)

Great news!

[Anonymous Coward]

Our department (structural integrity testing of BR23/07 machines) has been publishing reviews [stateofbr23.com] that were competitive with major journals. The thing is, we're academic [mcgregor.edu], so the licensing terms on software such as this has always been prohibitive. Instead, we've been forced to use things like SciVis CFS/SVW [hpc.mil], which really doesn't cut the mustard as far as hyperbolic tonicity, to name one painful, painful shortcoming. I actually had to spend quite a bit of time (two and half aweeks) handwriting a template to get back some of the functionality we would have had from the get-go with DAKOTA.
That's time spent away from actually running analyses. So, this is a Good Thing.

Mirror

[ttyp0]

Here is a mirror before the site goes down

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/materials-02h.html [gtlogistics.com]

Some useful info about licensing and libraries

[Anonymous Coward]

For the folks who would rather read the comments than the original news, here are some details about the licensing, straight from this [sandia.gov] page. This should help answer questions raised by this quote from the article:

The only restriction is that people cannot take the DAKOTA software, change it, and then sell it," Eldred says. "They can, however, design products with DAKOTA and sell their products."

Obviously he was misquoted.

Notice that there are several GPLed optimization libraries there. That's GOOD news, since writing that sort of routine for high dimensions is not trivial. So, here's the info:

Open Source Release
DAKOTA Version 3.0 is available for download under a GNU General Public License (GPL).

To initiate the download, first fill out the short Registration Form.

Source code tar files and binaries for selected platforms are available, as well as subscriptions to the user notification email list. Please notify us at [e-mail] if you experience any difficulties. We have started a FAQ for logging any difficulties encountered in downloading, building, and executing DAKOTA. Release notes are also available.

Supported Platforms and Software Dependencies
DAKOTA runs on most Unix platforms including Sun Solaris, HP UX, IBM AIX, SGI IRIX, DEC OSF, and Linux (PC and DEC). It also runs on the Intel Teraflop machine (ASCI Red) and Sandia's Computational Plant (CPlant). A Windows port is not planned at this time (Windows users might consider VMware for Linux dual-boot or a planned capability for XML-based resource distribution).

A transition from non-ANSI C++ to ANSI C++ has been completed for DAKOTA version 3.0. The ANSI C++ version of DAKOTA uses vector and list templates from the Standard Template Library (STL) available as part of the ANSI C++ standard. This allows the latest DAKOTA source distributions to be built independent of any commercial software (DOT and NPSOL are optional extensions). However, for builds on non-ANSI C++ compilers lacking STL, vector and list templates from the commercial product Tools.h++ from Rogue Wave software can be used in place of STL. This will require either a high-end development environment which includes Tools.h++ (e.g., Sun Solaris Workshop) or a separate commercial license from Rogue Wave.

DAKOTA utilizes the following external optimization libraries:

* DOT (nonlinear programming algorithms from Vanderplaats Research and Development; optional extension requiring a separate commercial license)
* NPSOL (nonlinear programming algorithms from Stanford Business Software; optional extension requiring a separate commercial license)
* CONMIN (public domain nonlinear programming algorithms; no license required for inclusion in DAKOTA distribution)

the following Sandia optimization, design of experiments, and uncertainty quantification libraries:

* SGOPT (stochastic global optimization algorithms; available under GNU LGPL)
* PICO (branch and bound for mixed integer nonlinear programs; available under GNU LGPL)
* OPT++ (nonlinear and direct search optimization algorithms; available under GNU LGPL); OPT++ additionally uses NEWMAT09 (serial vector/matrix utilities; conditions of use)
* DDACE (design and analysis of computer experiments; GNU LGPL in process)
* APPS (asynchronous parallel pattern search; available under GNU LGPL).
* DAKOTA/UQ (sampling, analytic reliability, and polynomial chaos expansion methods for uncertainty quantification; part of the DAKOTA GNU GPL license)
* rSQP++ (large-scale optimization algorithms for simultaneous analysis and design; available under an Artistic license)

the following Sandia utility libraries:

* UTILIB (utility library; available under GNU LGPL)
* PETRA (serial/parallel vector/matrix utilities; available under GNU LGPL)

and the following external utility libraries:

* MPI (parallel distributed-memory communication via message-passing; either the public domain MPICH or hardware-specific MPI versions; no license required)
* PLplot (graphics; available under GNU LGPL)

To the extent possible, all noncommercial libraries will be included in the DAKOTA tar files available for download. DAKOTA uses a flexible configuration management system to configure with any desired subset of these available packages. If any of the commercial packages are desired, then these must be licensed separately for source code (preferable) or target platform object libraries (less desirable, but workable with minor configuration modifications). These distributions are then installed in the appropriate DAKOTA subdirectories prior to building DAKOTA.