The method of lines (Schiesser, 1991; Hamdi, et al., 2007; Schiesser, 2009 ) is a technique for solving partial differential equations (PDEs) in which all but one dimension is discretized. MOL allows standard, general-purpose methods and software, developed for the numerical integration of ODEs and DAEs, to be used. A large number of integration routines have been developed over the years in many different programming languages, and some have been published as open source

Open source

The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...

 resources; see for example Lee and Schiesser (2004).

The method of lines most often refers to the construction or analysis of numerical methods for partial differential equations that proceeds
by first discretizing the spatial derivatives only and leaving the time variable continuous.