YADE - An open-source framework for open-science

When the development of Yade-DEM (Šmilauer et al., 2021) started, almost twenty years ago, making it open-source was a primary objective. It is used nowadays for classical DEM simulations as well as particle-fluid coupling, thermo–hydro-mechanical coupling, interaction with deformable membrane-like structures, cylinders and grids, FEM-coupling, non-spherical particles, deformable particles, and other brittle material simulations. It counts a large, active, and growing community of users and developers. The computationally-intense parts of the source code are written in C++, using flexible object models which allow for easy implementation of new features. A command line interface using Python enables rapid and concise scene construction, simulation control, post-processing, and debugging. A graphical user interface with 3D rendering makes simple basic manipulations, exploring variables, and live visualization even simpler. The software is available as a pre-compiled package for Debian and Ubuntu. It appears that the initial decision of developing under an open-source license was key to a sustained development. Understanding the tools and methods that were used is of interest for every development project in science, and it paves the way to "Open" science.