Habib Rostami

n these recent years, several metaheuristic optimization algorithms have been developed to solve complex real-world problems. However, according to the no free lunch theorem, there is no metaheuristic algorithm which has the best suited for solving all optimization problems. Therefore, developing new metaheuristic algorithms is an open problem. Two major categories of metaheuristics are swarm intelligence and evolutionary algorithms. Both of them have their own advantages. In this paper, we present a naturally swarm and evolutionary algorithm in which its particles have memory, collaboration, information sharing, and competition inherited from one specific analogy. So, it has the advantages of both swarm and evolutionary algorithms without complications of hybridizing them. We formulate a new metaheuristic optimization algorithm called open source development model algorithm (ODMA) inspired by open source development model and communities, in such a way that each potential solution is considered as a software, and by evolution of the softwares, better solutions of the function that should be optimized are searched. The main operations of the algorithm include employing features and methods of leading softwares, evolution of leading softwares based on their history and forking from leading softwares. After a detailed formulation and explanation of its implementation, the algorithm is evaluated by 1717 well-known benchmark functions, and the results are compared with PSO, ICA, and GA. The results show that ODMA outperforms GA, PSO, and ICA in terms of finding the global optimum and convergence.