In the early days of OpenSees, conventional wisdom was “You get what you pay for”. Sure, the internet was around, but the only OpenSees resources were the wiki, the examples manuals, and the message board.
Those resources are still around today. But there’s a ton of other OpenSees resources available including packages, pre- and post-processors, tutorials, and examples. There’s even a blog.
New elements, materials, and algorithms have been added along with fluid-structure interaction. You can use OpenSees with Python to build all kinds of applications.
So now, the prevailing sentiment should be “You get what you give”, i.e., you get out of OpenSees what you put into it.
Like OpenSees, this song is an enduring gift from the late 90s.
Portwood Digital 
One thought on “You Get What You Give”