ASWF TAC Meeting - January 12, 2022

Video Conference Link

Voting member attendance

Other Attendees

John Mertic, Linux Foundation
Andrew Grimberg, LF Release Engineering
David Morin, ASWF
Shannon Deoul, RazPR
Sam Richards, DIsney Imagineering.
JT Nelson, Pasadena Open Source consortium / SoCal Blender group
Scott Wilson, Rust WG
Matthew Low, DreamWorks Animation
Deke Kincaid, Digital Domain
Allen Rose, Madison Square Garden Entertainment
Nick Porcino, Pixar Animation Studios
Brent Villalobos, Dreamworks
Carol Payne, Netflix / D&I WG
Jim Helman, MovieLabs
Patrick Hodoul, Autodesk / OCIO
Jeff Bradley, DreamWorks
Erik Strauss, Netflix / Review & Approval WG
Morgan Prygrocki, Adobe
Sergio Rojas, Open Source Ambassador
Simran Spiller, Olive

Apologies

Joshua Minor, OTIO

Agenda

Rez discussion after proposal last meeting
- Should have a group discussion and accept Rez into ASWF
- How should we deal with “competing” projects (spk / Larry)
- Scott: do we remember roughly whether Rez stated that if ASWF accepted Rez, what resources could ASWF provide to Rez that would benefit it?
- Kimball: primary ask was to grow, and no longer be a single developer project. Legal infrastructure would make it easier for other facilities to contribute back.
- Scott: any reasons not to? Kimball: only reason was whether we will have “competing” projects? Larry: not sure what TAC wants to do about competing projects, some of the member companies seem committed to “other project”. Sean McDuffee: does this qualify as a “foundational” project? Kimball: OpenCue, OSL are more “experimental”. Larry: most projects already have wide use in facilities. JF: would be accepted to “incubation status”. Kimball: even if Rez is not used at facilities looking at other approaches, could still be used at smaller facilities / general members. Larry: don’t have a reason not to accept it. Michael: Bill mentioned it was heavily use at Dreamworks. Nick: burden on TAC is slight, we just have to listen to short updates. Cary: it is until it isn’t, we haven’t had to deal with a project “in crisis” yet, cautionary question to ask is “if a project goes south, would we be in a position to help it / muster support for it”. Thinking about what obligations we take on in the future. Not Rez-specific, more generally. Kimball: this is true for all our projects, but this is a smaller, single developer project for now. Eric: part of the goal of ASWF is to help support projects from risks of a single maintainer moving on. Wave: the point of incubation is to bring in a project to ASWF incubation, becomes a focus for people who can’t contribute can now contribute now that it is within the ASWF fold.
- Larry: have we gotten to the point that there are projects you can’t contribute to until part of ASWF? Wave: some companies only allow contribution to specific open source projects where the legal department has vetted the license. Larry: project controlled by a single person can still use same licenses and CLA. Wave: different companies have different levels of friction for contribution to open source projects. Larry: it would be an accomplishment if we did this. Cary: some larger companies frown on contribution to single person projects, whereas contribution to ASWF projects is easier. Kimball: Rez should be a project, not a WG.
- Patrick: if you accept a project in ASWF, does it become the reference project / promote that project? Kimball: an interesting point. We are implicitly endorsing a project if we accept it, our charter is to promote projects that are specific to the M&E / Film industry, Rez is used in a number of facilities. Sean: incubation phase is a way to have more people look at the project. Chris: would a WG be a better solution? Kimball: it’s really a project, not a WG. Chris: a WG would be around the topic of package management? Could be a good forum to survey the landscape. Allan mentioned the thought of running a survey. Do we see it realistic to have both projects accepted? Kimball: can see a different scale to them. Building your own large scale software deployment, vs just reusing binaries? Chris: would each project need to maintain two sets of packages? Kimball: anyone maintaining RPM SPEC or .deb configs? Doesn’t seem so.
- Larry: Rez / Spk config scripts don’t live in the project, they live one level above that since they specify which version and which commits to pull. Individual projects may not be maintaining those. Sam: there is an advantage to having common package configuration recipes. Could encourage a common recipe format. Gordon: we need to articular the differences if we are going to bring ion a diversity of solutions. Is there a formal comparison? Larry: there’s already a CI WG, and was part of the genesis of the spk collaborative project. Lots of people already using Rez, we should want to support that. Cary: our purpose isn’t to endorse or promote projects, but to support them. Sean McDuffee: does inclusion in ASWF “guarantee” support? Larry: it’s not “magic”, all projectgs are in the same boat, ASWF gives some visiblity, but TAC isn’t assigning people to work on project, people work on projects because they are interested in them. Cary: by admitting a project, we offer a certain level of support. If a project dies because it becomes outdated, that’s fine, everything as a life cycle, but it shouldn’t die because of lack of support. Allen: there are a finite amount of resources, so if there are two competing projects, that could dilute resources. Cary: competition between projects will happen, is it better if it happens within the organization?
- Kimball: motion to vote. Wave: seconds. Thumbs up, no opposes, two abstain (Gordon, Chris, in principle given the interesting new issues).
- Motion approved, Rez approved as an incubation level ASWF project.
- Larry: there has been discussion in CI group to ammend our mission statement, less about CI itself, but more the group of people who talks about builds, deployments, testing… So a lot of the discussion has drifted. If you are interested on how to build packages, that’s the place to go. JF: will present updated mission statement.
Finally approve the review & approval WG
- Is there someone who can walk us through proposal? Yes, Erik Strauss.
- Have been in shadows for a bit, objectives:
  - Standardization of media and metadata: standards, validation of encoding strategies for the industry to standardize on
  - Endeavour to stand up a project for an open source platform for review (SPI / Dneg), an actual code project on which anyone can build a review platform
- Kimball / John: we need to do the official WG vote. Do we have quorum
- Wave motions, a second.
- Thumbs ups, no opposes or abstains, motion carries. Welcome to the Review & Approval WG!
- Shannon: we can do a blog post? Erik: yes, will help with that.
GSoC / internship proposals [Carol]
- GSoC / possibility of our own program
- GSoC deadline coming up
- Got responses from several projects, sent note to TAC slack channel, answering questions about how detailed listings need to be
- GSoC has good documentation
- Submit application early Feb, want to get sense of how interested we are, what kind of resources we want to put in. Without enthusiasm, these programs will not succeed. So looking for expressions of interest, can work with you to turn this into GSoC application. Also looking for mentors, which is what Google is looking for.
- Timelines are more flexible this year the duration of GSoC projects.
- Deadline is technically today, if projects get proposals by end of week, should be OK.
- Kimball: took 3 weeks of “no computer time”, so will take advantage of this end of week delay. OpenEXR has great experience with last GSoC and are enthusiastic to do this again. Was a rewarding experience. Cary: talked in recent meeting, wrote up proposal.
- Sample from Rust WG: https://github.com/vfx-rs/organization/pull/11/files
- Sample from OpenEXR: https://wiki.aswf.io/display/OEXR/OpenEXR+Project+Ideas
- Eric: Asset group has a possible proposal? Wave: were wondering if there’s a specific alignment on GSoC, or a broader notion of “non-code projects” (which can’t be part of GSoC). Hard deadline is GsOC? Carol: it is both, we are doing at doing both. But hard deadline is for GsOC. Wave: have ideas about sample data, not necessarily writing code. Carol: working with LF, hoping to build off its system for internships. We need to come up with numbers to bring to the board. Wave: we will try to have a proposal by end of week.
LF Open Source Forums (John)
- March 10th, from past years this is a half day events focussed towards a more executive crowd, looking to put together schedule / program, asking projects if they have an outline of any major announcements that could line up around that time, if that can be shared (events, milestones), trying to put a program together and how this work can be shared. Please share with John or Alex in LF Marketing. Kimball: will talk offline, have some ideas on the topic.
Project funding [Michael]
- Several questions in USD and camera WG about getting resources. We’ve touched on the topic in a few TAC meetings, but not a clear process. So what would be the process? Kimball: it depends on what we are asking for: time bounded / concrete ask, we can approve that and ask the governing board. But a open ended / ongoing cost like Slack, that needs a bit more involved presentation to TAC. Hiring a developer would be more difficult since we don’t have a reporting structure. Michael: at last meeting, many members have company developers committed to ASWF projects, but some do not. But if it’s a simple manner of drawing up a proposal and submitting it, can do that. Kimball: yes, if we agree, we can move it on to Governing Board.
- David: every premiere member has committed an engineer equivalent to work on ASWF projects, nothing prevents members from committing more resources, but we rely on open source community to work on our projects.
- Kimball: hiring cameras for a day shoot could be a specific expenditure.
ASC StEM and Asset Project (Eric)
- Legal council from Disney suggested a rewording of what ASC wanted to avoid modified redistribution.
- ASC was fine with suggested. They would like to release assets next week to hit a conference deadline. Asset Project will request an OK, version 1.1 of the license, or optional (prefer as a 1.1).
- Wave : using original license + disclaimer, but then they can’t claim to fall under our license / wouldn’t have our license.
- Sean McDuffee: has this gone to Governing Board yet? Eric: no, John Mertic asking for feedback from LF legal. And yes, it’s short notice / timing is awkward. But would be great to have ASC footage as part of ASWF asset repo.
Pipeline working group proposal from 17-Nov: Invite Milan to present at next TAC meeting