We finance our software development with internal funding (from sales and maintenance fees) and via industry funded projects. The latter form of funding has the highest priority. This mode of financing ensures that we develop what our users want and that the system evolves in a user-driven way.

Industry funded projects come in two flavors: single-client funded and multi-client funded. Examples of single-client funded projects are the initial development of OpendTect with dip-steering and neural network for Statoil, various general improvements in OpendTect for BG, other general improvements for GdF-Suez, the Gap-decon attribute for Addax and the development of CCB for Wintershall.

Examples of multi-client sponsored projects are the developments which led to the SSIS (Sequence Stratigraphic Interpretation System) plugin and VMB (Velocity Model Building) plugin. We consider seismic sequence stratigraphy and velocity model building to be key development directions for OpendTect.

In all industry funded developments, our clients accept that general functionalities, developed in the context of the funded project, end up in OpendTect : the Open Source interpretation system. Only unique capabilities are released as commercial (closed source) plugins. This means that in most funded projects the entire OpendTect community (Open Source as well as commercial) benefits from the developments.

Presently, OpendTect SSIS (Sequence Stratigraphic Interpretation System) is the only commercial software system on the market that supports computer-aided sequence stratigraphic interpretations. The system was developed in two consecutive multi-client sponsored projects. A coherent set of R&D projects, aimed at improving and extending the SSIS technology, is defined. Additional sponsors sought!