ASWF TAC Meeting - June 17, 2020

Video Conference Link

Voting member attendance

Other Attendees

John Mertic, Linux Foundation
Emily Olin, Linux Foundation
JT Nelson, Pasadena Open Source consortium / SoCal Blender group
Ashley Whetter, Python 3 Working Group / DNeg
Nick Porcino, Pixar
Greg Denton, Microsoft Azure
Andrew Grimberg, Linux Foundation
Mac Moore, Conductor Technologies
Andrew Briar, WB
Robin Rowe, CinePaint
Rachel Rose, ILM, Diversity+Inclusion WG
Mark Elendt, SideFX
Alex Meddick, Rising Sun Pictures

Apologies

Joshua Minor, OpenTimelineIO Representative

Agenda

Goals for TAC: Year 2
Streamlined Slack self-invite workflow: ASWF Slack Login
New member welcome: Sean O’Connell (AMD)
- On the software performance engineering team
- Optimize ISV benchmarks and applications for all server and desktop CPUs
OpenCue Incubation review
- Process reference: https://github.com/AcademySoftwareFoundation/tac/blob/master/process/lifecycle.md
- Checklist on how the project is developing
- Is the graduation imminent or still hurdles to overcome
- How can we help the project along if needed
- Brian: getting close to going for graduation, everything looking good, probably need another couple of months to complete the CII requirements.
- Daniel: the question of accurately gauging project usage in the community can be tricky.
- Brian: it’s a question that’s applicable to all Open Source projects, Google is used to having detailed telemetry / information on user base, but we don’t have that in OpenCue, and haven’t found a good way to get this information without hitting privacy issues. Other ASWF projects haven’t had to deal with this so much since they are clear industry standards.
- JT: Pasadena Open Source is planning to keep OpenCue as part of the promoted software stack, including all ASWF projects. Planning a press release, have exposure with close association with the Blender project.
- Larry: in the process of switching over from internal predecessor (cue3) at SPI
- Daniel: Does anyone have expertise on how to deal with open source user base information gathering? Larry: open source authors are always somewhat guessing, “begging” for feedback. Sometimes hear through the grapevine, sometimes through industry article (FXGuide). But most info is by luck, probably under counting. John: also should figure out goals, users vs studios. Some projects will enable a way for companies to opt-in to a way to state that a company is a user. Example from one of the CNCF projects, Envoyproxy. they collect a data file that companies can opt in (added as a commit). Often you need to get some kind of legal review.
- Brian: sounds like something that could be easy / low overhead to put in place.
- Daniel: a ASWF-level survey could also yield useful information.
- Brian: will present data at the next meeting gathered from OpenCue public channels.
Technical Project updates
- OpenShadingLanguage adoption
  - Legal Committee meeting
  - Chris: seems like things are pointing back to Apache CLA, which is where things originally started at. Lawyers are currently re-reviewing that CLA. Hopefully will have positive info to report at next TAC meeting.
  - John: this could possibly have impact on all ASWF projects.
  - Larry: do we have any confidence that the next company that has large contributions to make won’t also ask for major revisions? How can we be confident that “we’ve got this nailed”?
  - John: these things are never completely bullet proof, as case law evolves things change over time in OSS, trying to follow best practices. High desire to achieve this result of a framework acceptable to all / most companies.
  - Daniel: we have been trying to take steps towards the more standard and broadly used licenses, processes and terms, and encourage our member companies and contributors to accept those rather than require custom terms.
- OpenEXR / IlmBase / Math Library
  - Cary: new repos are setup, code ported over and building.
  - Set up GitHub project and issues to host discussion, strategies about modernizing exception handling
  - Daniel: very good discussion on ways to make use of various recent C++ features, but still try to minimize / prevent API changes.
  - Cary: the more disruptive the changes, the more carefully they need to be vetted. “Anything” is on the table, but disruption to existing code requires strong arguments in favor.
  - Kimball: cleaning up the OpenEXR repo itself will lead to questions to the group about how they deal with their dependencies.
  - Cary: Owen is working out great, he’s a great asset.
  - Larry: would like to hear feedback from other projects on GSoC interns.
  - Cary: 30 min checking once a week, same for Kimball, plus TSC weekly meeting, and daily email contact, so good engagement.
  - Daniel: towards the end we may want to review the process. Cary: we have to file a progress report end of June and July, payment is contingent on that. Will share info on what is required of this report.
- OpenTimelineIO: great start, got close to the finish line, following the proposed schedule.
- OpenCue: also good progress, aligning with the schedule, looking great so far.
- OpenColorIO
  - Moving towards V2 release
  - Michael: spun up 2 WGs, one to redo documentation / website, and creating a standard ACES / OCIO config.
  - Successful, involvement from new contributors, weekly or bi-weekly meetings.
Working Groups
- Process: https://github.com/AcademySoftwareFoundation/tac/blob/master/process/working_groups.md
- CI
  - No meeting since last TAC call
  - Progress on getting AWS / GPU builds.
  - Michael: OCIO will work on this next week
- Diversity & Inclusion
  - Rachel Rose (ILM), first D&I meeting just before this one.
  - Not a lot to report yet after first meeting, great turnout with 39 attendees, with good diversity.
  - First half of meeting was self introductions, what people were looking for. Many newcomers to these activities or ASWF itself.
  - Second half was brainstorming as to what the group is hoping to accomplish. Engage with college-level students, as well as younger children interested in Open Source.
  - Many conversations around education, skills for negotiation and promotions, rise in the ranks of industry.
  - Discussions around codes of conduct.
  - We should be doing more things like Summer of Code to pull in a wider group of people, giving them projects to work on.
  - Hoping for a second meeting next week or the week after to establish concrete goals. Will send out survey to determine next date.
  - Emily: large desire for mentorship, asking project TSCs to identify what students could work on, both code and documentation, will be useful when ASWF launches mentorship program.
  - Template to be shared with TAC, vote to endorse the WG
- Python 3
  - Ashley: kickoff meeting, set up GitHub repo and mailing list.
  - Discussing the direction the group wants to follow and “mission statement”. Information sharing to help the transition to Python 3, reducing risk as well as specific technical processes.
  - Looking for a TAC member sponsor (Daniel: voting member of the TAC who can endorse / propose the working group, doesn’t necessarily have to be the chair of the WG, Daniel happy to be that person).
  - Looking to get more (DCC) vendor representation within the group.
  - Proposed WG statement
  - Daniel: are we ready to vote on the endorsement of the WG?
  - Daniel sponsors, Kimball proposes, seconded by Henry. No opposes or abstain, unanimous, Python 3 WG is endorsed.
  - Daniel: will reach out to DCC vendors to invite representation to the WG.
- USD
  - Cory: had a really good meeting, well attended, a bunch of pre-work was done to identify categories for knowledge base. Spent most of the session reviewing those. Well underway, trying to materialize into GitHub Wiki. Comments that GitHub Wiki may quickly become a bottleneck, and Confluence may be a better platform, will reach out to John to see if that’s possible.
  - Didn’t spend time on the USD CI yet, will spend more time on that once the documentation infrastructure is in place
  - Next meeting on Wednesday
Update on candidate projects
Open Source Day - Emily
- SIGGRAPH is likely to be last week of August, so we are targeting August 12-13 2020.
- Using Zoom platform, similar lineup to last year, sessions around 30 minutes, 7AM to 2PM Pacific (not great for Australia).
- MaterialX, ACES, as well as ASWF projects
- Use case presentations from studios
- Can present talks about specific use of projects in production
- Will start working on formalizing format
- Save the date!
- Daniel: what about Beers of a Feather? Is there any way we can encourage informal discussions?
- Emily: there is crossover with the D&I WG on how to encourage involvement / contribution.
- Larry: would be great if some of the new contributors in D&I WG could participate to Open Source Day
- Wave: documents on “how to get involved” can be really useful. Larry: we should have ready answers available for “how do I get involved”
- Wave: does LF have any such resources from its other projects / foundations? Can be as trivial as “How to I make my first PR?”. Emily: should be able to find something across the LF.
- Larry: as part of GSoC proposal, every project identified good issues to start with.
- Rachel: D&I group could be a good place to collate / prioritize this info
- Wave: not only developers can be mentors
- Daniel: is new documentation for OCIO able to bring in a wider range of contributors? Michael: trying to approach from perspective of not just writing the documentation for developers, but also integrators, artists, TDs… Documentation goes from “shallow” to “deep”, targeting different types of users. Also trying to set up documentation to argue for a wider base of contributors.
- Emily: LF has Confluence, what else? John: projects go in many different directions for documentation. Some incorporate it close to the code. Andy working on spinning up a Confluence server.
- John: LF course on contributing to Open Source
- John: some LF projects go down the path of building a training course, sometimes using the EdX platform. Doesn’t take the place of actual documentation, but can be worth exploring to broaden the user base / engagement.
- Emily: k8s has good info on maintaining documentation
- Michael: notes on OCIO documentation WG is in the repo
- Emily: we need to set D&I goals for the TAC so we can measure against those goals and measure progress.
- Daniel: there is a mailing list and Slack channel
VFX Platform (Larry)
- The VFX Platform just published its 2021 Draft specifications. Highlight #1 is that it’s moving to gcc 9.3 and C++17 (and, as we already knew, Python 3.7) – so let that be warning to projects to start preparing, as well as getting these cases into their CI. Highlight #2 is that they named OCIO v2.0 and OpenEXR 3.0 for 2021, despite the fact that both are still in progress and not released yet (how’s that for lighting a fire under them?).
- Nick: To be clear this is just the Draft for next year so please send feedback if you would prefer a different version for anything. We have around 4-6 weeks before we start locking in versions so we have a final target everyone can work towards. We are actively considering changing Python to 3.8 so please shout if you have opinions…
Next meeting
- 1 July 2020

Action Items (AIs)

Emily, Daniel: Broad community survey of project usage?
Daniel: Contact vendors (DCCs in particular) for involvement in Python 3 WG

ASWF TAC Meeting - June 17, 2020

Voting member attendance

Other Attendees

Apologies

Agenda

Action Items (AIs)

Notes

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