Re: [EnergyPlus_Support] Way forward on writing Perl scripts for Energy Plus

On Thu, Sep 5, 2013 at 11:14 PM, Chien Si Harriman <chien.harriman@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Thanks everyone for their comments. I didn't know about some of these things. Now, I have to ask Edwin. If it is so cool, why does no one do it? I'm guessing because people are afraid to share it. It is a shame, because I imagine that if the industry could rely on some open source stuff, that would be helpful for everybody in really profound ways. I am not sure why we don't embrace it because we are the perfect candidates. Never enough time or money, a really complex project, lots of data...not sure why it doesn't resonate and there is not already a serious movement towards open source. It should be more than just cool to post stuff and have people look at it. It should be full community engagement with a leader and deep conversations. Writing a text file is not that difficult, which is why I love energy plus. I'm sure lots of people have worked on pieces of code to do it. So I have to lead myself to the conclusion that the community doesn't know how to engage each other on this issue or generally feels threatened or worried to give stuff away. I do not know of a single open source repository for code to create idf files. I do know there is an open source fork of energy plus and Big Ladder works a lot on that.

Is there anyone out there who really believes in open source on this email thread? Can anyone even cite the mantras of Linus Torvold? I know I am getting nerdy here, and I don't mean to p- anyone off. Trying to do the opposite actually. Would the community benefit from an open-source type of mindset, and is anyone actually brave enough to post all their hard work on sourceforge?

I only know of a handful of people in this industry who are serious about open source, and they are in the minority. I only ask to see what kind of reactions I get, and if people are serious about it, I would set up a repository on the understanding that other people would contribute to it and actually check it out. I would be afraid of being used like a cheap blow up doll though. No one would actually contribute anything, just take and take. I'm assuming this is everyone's sentiment.

This is me from the outside, looking in. I only see a few EnergyPlus projects on source forge and none of them seem that well-developed. Am I wrong?

On Thu, Sep 5, 2013 at 10:14 AM, Edwin Lee <leeed2001@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

"I have code just sitting around,"
"Why not share it on sourceforge?"

... good question? It's always cool to see what other people are doing. If you already have code sitting around, why not post it on SourceForge or GitHub?

On Thu, Sep 5, 2013 at 11:08 AM, Linda Lawrie <linda@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

At 10:46 AM 9/5/2013, Chien Si Harriman wrote:

Just curious why all the idf making only happens at the labs and at DesignBuilder, etc? More of a general thought that has no answer, but would be interested to hear people's opinions.

Have you looked through the third party software:

http://apps1.eere.energy.gov/buildings/energyplus/other_tools.cfm

--
Edwin Lee, PhD
Engineer, Commercial Buildings Research Staff

National Renewable Energy Laboratory

Javed Iqbal, LEED AP, CEA

Sr. Energy Analyst