AWSF TAC Meeting - September 19, 2018

Voting Member Attendees

  • Daniel Heckenberg, Animal Logic Pty Ltd
  • Henry Vera, Double Negative
  • Bill Ballew, DreamWorks Animation
  • Kimball Thurston, Weta Digital Limited
  • Wayne Arnold, Autodesk ( delegate for Gordon Bradley, Autodesk )
  • Cary Gooding ( delegate for Michael O’Gorman, Cisco Systems Inc. )
  • Matt Kuhlenschmidt, Epic Games, Inc.
  • Mark McGuire, Blue Sky Studios, Inc.

Voting Member Regrets

  • Gordon Bradley, Autodesk
  • Steve May, The Walt Disney Studios
  • Brian Cipriano, Google
  • Jim Jeffers, Intel Corporation

Agenda

  • Techincal Project updates
    • OpenVDB
  • VFXPlatform working group have invited a TAC representative to join
  • CI infrastructure update
    • SideFX EULA / download clarification
    • Autodesk EULA / download clarification
  • Update on candidate projects
    • OpenEXR
    • OpenColorIO
  • Request for any items for Governing Board discussion

Action Items (AIs)

Notes

Andrew gave an update on OpenVDB, indicating that they are still iterating on the charter and the plan is to present the resource needs to the Governing Board for approval. There was discussion on the resource needs which OpenVDB indicated they are working through the details on.

Thanh indicated that Windows build should be almost ready, working with OpenEXR to prove out the model. There was a question around if Jenkins could size out the builders for a given project; Thanh showcased the options that the cloud provider has at https://vexxhost.com/public-cloud/servers, as well as talking about the Jenkins configuration for which type of build node a Jenkins job would use. Mike Dolan asked Thanh to elaborate on the full costs and scope around CI infrastructure for a given project; Thanh said the starting point would be 10 builders and if that needs to be increased the TAC would need to review the need and costs.

Thanh said the cloud provider indicated it could have GPUs available for builders and asked the TAC for guidance on the project requirements for GPUs. OpenVDB indicated they didn’t have present requirements but downstream users of the code have built extensions that leverage a GPU. Daniel said that the group should evaluate the specific project needs, but generally said a recent NVidia GPU would generally work. There was further discussion on details, and Thanh said he would work with the cloud provider for a proof of concept.

There was an update on the EULAs for the builds; the Autodesk EULA should be able to be used for the builds.

Larry Gritz has started the proposal for OpenColorIO, and indicated that the initial focus is completing internal approval for membership first before submitting the proposal. There was no update for OpenEXR, but attendees indicated they believe the proposal is in progress.

Daniel indicated that the VFXPlatform working group has invited a TAC representative to join, and asked to contact him offline if they wish to fill that role.

John Mertic shared that new TAC projects should use the Apache 2 license with a DCO if it is a net-new project ( per the charter guidelines ) and the TAC should carefully considering asking new projects to change licenses due to the high burden on the project. All TAC members generally agreed with this approach.

David Morin said the IBM had interest in bringing a blockchain project forward and one with CHAOSS that has interest of being under the ASWF, asking if there is guidance on projects suitablity of a given project. There was some discussion that projects don’t have to specifically be code, but it should advance the goals of the ASWF.