Since Hephaestus is only a framework, its standalone utility is minimal. It is designed to allow others to quickly create programs that can solve their particular problem, by allowing them to concentrate on the equations specific to their problem and not on the underlying work involved.
In the future, Hephaestus hopes to support grid generators and solver types, included static solvers and adaptive-mesh solvers.
The Hephaestus Computational Framework is distributed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL). This means that it is free for most uses. The main restriction is that if its source code is used as a library to create another program, than the people who receive that work must be able to get a newer (or older, if they like) version of Hephaestus and use it instead of the version that was included with the program. See the LICENSE file that should come with the distribution for more details.
For more licensing options, you may contact me.
For more information about the Hephaestus project, see the Sourceforge summary page. This page includes links to discussion groups, mailing lists, and bug/request submission and tracking forums.