The recent announcement ?A Shift in BTO?s BEM Strategy: A New Future for the OpenStudio Application? has generated much interest within the building energy modeling community. Thank you to everyone who sent questions or comments about this transition to OpenStudio at nrel.gov. After reading and responding to many emails, the announcement has been updated with a Frequently Asked Questions section addressing the most commonly asked questions. We hope that this update will help to clarify questions about the OpenStudio Application transition plan. Please continue to send additional questions or concerns to OpenStudio at nrel.gov and thank you again for your interest in this transition.

OpenStudio Application Transition - Frequently Asked Questions

* Why is BTO making this transition?
* The planned transition of the OpenStudio Application is BTO?s attempt to balance interests stated by industry and formalized by the IBPSA-USA Advocacy Committee (https://www.ibpsa.us/committee/advocacy-committee) with needs of current users that depend on the OpenStudio Application for business needs.
* Will the OpenStudio Application remain available throughout the transition?
* Three OpenStudio SDK releases are planned during the transition period (April 2019, October 2019, April 2020). Updates to and installers for the OpenStudio Application will be made available at each of these OpenStudio SDK releases. Source code and installers for the OpenStudio Application up to and including the April 2020 release will remain available after the transition period.
* Who will the OpenStudio Application transition to? Will the OpenStudio Application still be open-source/freeware after the transition?
* The OpenStudio Application is currently licensed under a BSD 4-Clause open-source license. This license allows for any entity to fork the code for further development and distribution under a variety of licenses, open-source and otherwise. Currently, BTO and NREL are not considering transferring copyright of the OpenStudio Application or changing the open-source BSD 4-Clause license for code maintained by NREL before or during the transition period. NREL may explore licensing options for the use of the OpenStudio trademark or other assets by interested third-party developers and distributors upon request. Given the recent timing of this announcement, no entity or entities have yet announced specific plans to continue support for the OpenStudio Application after the transition period. Any entities interested in potentially supporting or maintaining the OpenStudio Application should contact OpenStudio at nrel.gov with any questions.
* How can I be involved in this or other changes to OpenStudio in the future?
* For future significant changes, BTO aims to gather broad stakeholder feedback before finalizing decisions. More information will be provided at a relevant time.