[foadsf]

I work for an important company, which if adopting OpenFOAM, will have a great impact on the software’s development and community. However, to my disappointment, the internal userbase is fading away, moving towards SIEMENS STAR-CCM+. Now I want to open up a discussion here to encourage my colleagues to consider OpenFOAM. Not that it can replace STAR-CCM+ immediately, given the native integration into other SIEMENS products we use (i.e., NX, Teamcenter, Simcenter…). But the software, OpenFOAM, is already installed on our HPC server.
Now my question is what arguments can help my cause to convince my company investing in the software. Things I can think of:

• No licensing fees: of course one has to invest more time when using a FLOSS, compared to proprietary products. But at least the enormous licensing fees will be spared.
• No vendor data lock: Using a FLOSS, our data will not be locked into one specific company’s proprietary data format. We own our own data and we can switch to any other supplier whenever we want.
• Customizability and extendibility: We have access to all the internal guts of a FLOSS, giving us the ability to modify it to our preference when/where needed, add features, or customize to our specific needs.
• Reliability: Same as above having access to OpenFOAM’s source codes, gives us the ability to check the algorithms and the implementations, find possible mistakes, and resolve bugs.

Are there any other advantages that I haven’t included? Please help me know.

P.S. I have also posted this question on Reddit, Twitter and LinkedIn.