Abstract
This study seeks to understanding the growth and popularity of Open Source Software (OSS) development for simulation modeling under Science and Engineering domain on SourceForge online service platform. The objectives include understanding the importance, if any, of the features such as, license type, programming language, Operating System version, review rating in influencing the popularity of a given software application as measured by downloads. For obvious reasons, end-users select and adopt specific applications based on their usage needs and the suitability of a given application in meeting their needs. Nevertheless, some applications may be easily adoptable than the other given the different options available for customization as well as scalability opportunities present in an application. So, other factors remaining common, popularity gained by an application with the increased downloads tends to draw prospective users to a specific application more than the others. This study analyses the availability and accessibility of simulation modeling software on the Source Forge website, undeniably, a very large repository of open source software resources. Limiting the search to “Simulations” within “Science and Engineering” domain /category. The top 250 applications’ data is downloaded and analyzed. Useful insights and metrics are developed and compiled to assist end-users to understand the profile of open source simulation applications available for users for free downloads.
Highlights
What is Open Source? The term "open source" refers to something people can modify and share because its design is publicly accessible [1]
Scientific research in combination with other categories of audience accounts for 62 observations, which is to be expected since the observations were selected from the “Science and Engineering” domain
Noteworthy from the figure 6 is the fact that China and India are #2 and #3 in downloading 16 and 14 distinct simulation applications the most number of times compared to any other country in the world having access to these Open source simulation software applications
Summary
What is Open Source? The term "open source" refers to something people can modify and share because its design is publicly accessible [1]. The term open source denotes the accessibility of ‘source code” underlying any application software that is made available to the end-users so that they modify the application software to suit their usage needs under rather unrestrictive set of terms of usage license [1].
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