ASWF TAC Meeting - August 12, 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
Greg Denton, Microsoft Azure
Andrew Grimberg, Linux Foundation Release Engineering
Michael Zink, Warner Brothers

Apologies

Michael Dolan, OpenCOlorIO Representative
Larry Gritz, Sony Pictures Imageworks
Joshua Minor, OpenTimelineIO Representative

Agenda

CLA Followup (John)
- PR for guidance: https://github.com/AcademySoftwareFoundation/tac/pull/186
- Follow up from last meeting, guidance and links to specific CCLA and ICLA that we are attempting to move our projects to, and recommend for new projects
- Lots of good discussion on that PR. Are we ready to go?
- John: looks like we’ve addressed all the pieces of feedback so far, so doesn’t seem like there are any blockers? But don’t want to assume from other TAC members. Had Steve Winslow from LF, he added a few comments. We are trying to be careful how we advertise this, “ASWF 2020 CLA” since there are a few accommodations on top of the Apache CLA, so we use a different naming. But when talking to internal counsel for sign off, can make it clear that it is a derivative of the Apache ICLA/CCLA.
- Daniel: looks like we should go ahead and merge, further PR should be directed to the PR thread.
Conference Updates (Emily)
- Good to pre-designate people who will like to answer questions to make it faster to switch on video
- 200 registrations so far
- All sessions will be recorded, uploaded to YouTube a week later
- Brian: for Q&A, will chat happen within the Zoom webinar tool for chat? Emily: someone will be designated to deal with questions, we can point people to project Slack channels, for some of the sessions that don’t have one, we can ask channels to the ASWF Slack. At conclusion at each project session, we should redirect people to Slack, it won’t be possible to continue Q&A after the end of the session.
- Sean McDuffee: talk has multiple speakers at different locations, is that OK? Emily: yes, that’s not a problem as long as everyone is designated as a speaker. Also probably have one person to have a single slide deck rather than having different presenters sharing their own section of a deck.
- Daniel: using Keynote with Zoom screen sharing can be tricky. Pre-baked PDF can help to reduce points of failure.
- Cary: can we do a dry run before the day? OpenEXR will have several speakers. Emily: can set up a dummy Zoom session. Sean McDuffee: would be great for us as well. Brian: same for OpenCue. JT: usually referred to as a “tech rehearsal”.
- SIGGRAPH: will be doing a Foundation Update on Monday August 24th, plus whirlwind project updates, for people who can make SIGGRAPH but not Open Source Days.
- SIGGRAPH BoF participation: costs and barriers to entry (Michael). Need “Enhanced” registration level for BoF access. Would it make sense to sponsor access for some of the important initiatives we want to present? Emily: it is SIGGRAPH’s BoF policy, shows that it’s important to have our own events. But ASWF may be able to cover costs for ASWF presenters at SIGGRAPH costs. No details have been shared so far, what platform will be used, or if recordings of BoFs will be available.
- Emily: most of the content will be a repeat of that’s presented at Open Source Days, which will be openly available. Want to figure out updates from groups that aren’t doing separate updates during Open Source Days.
- Conference app and privacy (Whova - JF). On Zoom, moderators can decide how much data to be shared.
- Daniel: a number of attendees are busy with Digipro, unfortunately it wasn’t possible to reschedule TAC meeting.
Git branch names (Kimball)
- TAC list thread
- Kimball: OpenEXR looking at renaming branches to work towards D&I goals, and have a large merge ahead so good time.
- USD has renamed its primary branch “dev” where they accept PRs.
- We should try to agree to do the same thing on all repos, it’s not a hard requirement but would be helpful to be consistent. Should we use “dev” like USD? Does the D&I committee have any feedback on this?
- Brian: what about “main” which seems to be prevalent (GitHub recommends that). Kimball: not thrilled with “main”. Andrew: GitHub went with “main” since it’s generic, doesn’t make a statement as to policy, so they just went with “main”. Daniel: doesn’t tie in with any of standard git branch naming schemes.
- Cary: confusion of looking at online documentation & examples, makes sense to stick with as straightforward a config as possible?
- Daniel: good time to draw feedback from projects. Kimball: don’t necessarily feel strongly about it, but a good moment in time to make this change for OpenEXR. Don’t have a strong opinion as to “main” vs “dev”. Nick Porcino had voiced objection about “dev” vs “release”. Unclear as to why USD went with “dev”. “Dev” doesn’t make sense for EXR images repo. Chris Kulla: OSL had been leaning towards “dev/release”, “main” is too vague? Andrew: might push towards “dev” / “release”, if the default branch you get when you clone a repo is “dev”, it tells you something about where to submit PRs. Cary: OpenEXR Images repo could have a different structure. JF: projects are supposed to have a stated branching strategy document. Chris: what do you get by default, the “dev” or the “release”: GitHub lets you configure what is the default branch when you clone a repo. Kimball: the UI also reflects that, where your PRs go by default. Can encourage “dev” as the default destination for PRs.
- Daniel: should we use our template project to have a proposal as to our recommended GitHub / git setup? Capture essence of this discussion. To be discussed as a PR on the Sample Project. Could add a poll to decide between alternatives, looks like there’s some weight behind “dev / release”.
OpenTimelineIO incubation review process (Josh, John)
- Pushed to next TAC meeting due to availability
- Will try to do presentation and vote during the same meeting
Technical Project updates
- OpenVDB (Ken)
  - NanoVDB
  - Sub project in the main OpenVDB project, being worked at NVIDIA
  - TSC voted to adopt project into OpenVDB last week
  - Ken not available this week, anyone else have info
  - JT: from attending TSC meeting, looks like an important project, looking to work on a release of information for Open Source Days, perhaps have been talking to Emily? It looks like a really important project for OpenVDB users.
  - Emily: have been in touch with OpenVDB, working on a press release, some questions as to whether it gets its own repo or not.
  - JT: decided on repo structure at yesterday’s TSC meeting. Also releasing version 7.1.
  - NanoVDB is a similar implementation of OpenVDB but targeting mobile applications, so subset of functionality, no external dependencies. Also uses the GPU.
  - Daniel: there will be technical interest within the TAC, as well as how does this get organized without ASWF organization, hopefully in time for events next week.
- OpenEXR (Kimball, Cary)
  - Cary: preparing for the Open Source Day next week, and companion initial release of OpenEXR 3.0. Things may be proceeding a bit more slowly than expected, may not have an actual release in time for the presentation.
  - Nearing end of Owen Thomson internship, he’s interested to keep working for the project (also he’s looking for a full time position if anyone is interested).
  - Kimball: rewritten the core of EXR, around 8x faster to open a header, will present at the Open Source Days.
  - Daniel: topics on migration and dependencies of VFX Platform 2021 which already specifies OpenEXR v3. How can we ease the transition.
  - Kimball: there will be additional APIs for thread safety, but existing API should still work as is, some C++11 related cleanups, but leaving typedefs in there, some headers may have deprecation warnings but will still be present.
- OSL (Chris)
  - PR posted by Larry for the new official CLAs
  - Will take a vote on the next meeting (after SIGGRAPH)
  - “In the home stretch”
Working Groups
- CI (Daniel)
  - No CI meeting since last TAC meeting
  - Some activity with OCIO and GPU CI
  - Andy: builds are trying to happen but having issues accessing the GPUs for OpenGL, in touch with AWS to try to resolve issue
  - Provided a S3 bucket for OpenCue to pass artifacts between passes if needed
  - 14 day retention policy, can be used for other projects who might need this as well
- Diversity & Inclusion (Carol, Rachel, Emily)
  - Submitting charter this week
  - Meeting earlier this week, looking for volunteers to lead various initiatives, university partnerships and outreach, join calls, mentorships
  - Not a ton to update, should have more activity after SIGGRAPH
- Python 3 (Ashley)
  - Meeting earlier this week, anyone can give update? Will check in on the notes.
- USD (Cory)
  - Meeting this week. Continuing to flesh out Wiki, “State of USD-Interest” newsletter for August. Looking to update the landing page of the Wiki to give more guidance to anyone who lands there. Will announce Wiki more widely on usd-interest
  - Doc and tutorials on USD web site a gentler introduction
  - Aloys has working USD inside a Jupyter notebook
Update on candidate projects
Next meeting
- 26 August 2020

ASWF TAC Meeting - August 12, 2020

Voting member attendance

Other Attendees

Apologies

Agenda

Action Items (AIs)

Notes

Chat