[Bldg-sim] White Box Technologies announces the establishment of a

[Joe Huang]

Don't know yet. The first thing is to get LBNL to formally relinquish 
its intellectual lock on the source code, which they've said they're 
willing to do for years.

Joe

Joe Huang
White Box Technologies, Inc.
346 Rheem Blvd. Suite 108D
Moraga CA 94556
(o) +925 388 0265
(c) +510 928 2683
yjhuang at whiteboxtechnologies.com
www.whiteboxtechnologies.com



Randy Wilkinson wrote:
> What kind of open source license would this project utilize?  GPL or 
> similar?  You might have a better chance getting others involved if 
> they were assured that their contributions were always passed along 
> under the same license and that no person or company can grab all the 
> hard work you've done and use it as the core for their commercial product.
>
> Randy
>
> On 1/21/2010 12:52 PM, Joe Huang wrote:
>> Dear Friends and Colleagues,
>>
>> White Box Technologies wishes to announce its intention to establish 
>> a non-profit Center for Open Source Building Energy Simulations 
>> (COSBES). I admit the title may sound a bit on the grandiose side, 
>> but it capsulizes my thinking on what may help our little world of 
>> building energy simulations - a non-profit non-commercial center on 
>> simulation programs and resources that's in the public domain.
>>
>> My initial goals are very modest, but my long-range vision is for the 
>> Center to be capable of significant software development and support, 
>> but always open source. My first steps are simply to maintain an 
>> open-source version of DOE-2.1E. DOE-2.1E has been effectively 
>> abandoned by LBNL and DOE for close to a decade. I have assurances 
>> from LBNL that it's only a matter of paperwork for them to make the 
>> program open source, and have communicated to them my intentions 
>> without receiving any objections.
>>
>> So what would this support consist of, besides making the program and 
>> source code freely available? That would of course depend on the 
>> public's (your) interest and need, which is one reason for this 
>> announcement! But for starters, I have a backlog of completed work 
>> that have never been incorporated into the public release version of 
>> DOE-2.1E, such as two-dimensional and combined response factors for 
>> composite walls, a decent foundation model, and an improved weather 
>> file format.  In addition, I'm currently working on contract for ORNL 
>> to incorporate AtticSim into 2.1E. Lastly, I have a license from LBNL 
>> to continue working on my last major work there - a 
>> partially-completed DOE-2 to EnergyPlus translator (doe2ep) that, 
>> funding pending, can be updated to the current EnergyPlus release. 
>> Also in the works and soon to be launched are (1)  VisualEPlus, a 
>> graphical user interface for EnergyPlus done by colleagues in China, 
>> and (2) actual-year weather data service accessing NCDC's massive 
>> International Surface Hourly (ISH) data base.
>>
>> I had originally thought of calling a meeting at ASHRAE to make this 
>> announcement, but then realized that finding a time to meet at ASHRAE 
>> is an impossibility. However, I would be happy to entertain any 
>> questions and comments while at the conference, where I'll typically 
>> be found in TC 4.7 and 4.2 meetings. For course, I'm also open to 
>> questions and comments posted on BLDG-SIM, although my responses will 
>> be somewhat delayed.
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