Academy Software Foundation Technical Advisory Council (TAC) Meeting - December 11, 2024

Join the meeting at https://zoom-lfx.platform.linuxfoundation.org/meeting/97880950229?password=81d2940e-c055-43b9-9b5a-6cd7d7090feb

Voting Representative Attendees

Premier Member Representatives

Project Representatives

Carol Payne - Diversity & Inclusion Working Group Representative
Carol Payne - OpenColorIO Representative
Cary Phillips - OpenEXR Representative
Chris Kulla - Open Shading Language Representative
Diego Tavares Da Silva - OpenCue Representative
Jonathan Stone - MaterialX Representative
Ken Museth - OpenVDB Representative

Industry Representatives

Jean-Francois Panisset - Visual Effects Society

Non-Voting Attendees

Non-Voting Project and Working Group Representatives

LF Staff

Andrew Grimberg - LF Release Engineering
David Morin - Academy Software Foundation
Emily Olin - Academy Software Foundation
John Mertic - The Linux Foundation
Yarille Ortiz - The Linux Foundation

Other Attendees

JT Nelson, Pasadena Open Source consortium / SoCal Blender group
Lee Kerley, Apple
Ryan Bottriel, ILM / SPK
Lorna Dumba, Framestore
Rob Rowe, Cinepaint
Andrew Pearce

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Agenda

General Updates
- LFX Insights review for projects #920
- OpenAPV - defining 6 month milestones #877
- TAC Chair / Vice Chair for 2025 #913
Evolving our working groups program #798

Notes

D&I annual review moved to next year due to schedule conflict
OpenQMC
- Eric E: general assignment on approval to OpenQMC code base at it stands, but needs high level approval
- Basic patents have expired / about to expire, some later patents are more niche / less relevant
OpenAPV
- John: Eric / Sam looking at deliverables for 6 month deliverable
- Eric R: scoping of evaluation criteria, project is working on creating ffmpeg branch for integration, on which we can run test suite. Will start doing TSC meetings early next year, Sam and I will participate
- Youngkwon: working on the draft document, ready to work on technical details. We understand most important part is the ffmpeg plugin, working on testing, should be available early next year. Will start TSC meetings so we can start documentation and details of process to complete eval documents.
LFX Insights review for projects
- John: original didn’t seem to produce accurate stats, getting better now, as well as a facelift.
- Improvements on data quality, removing duplicate profiles. Could use help from projects to look at the data and state whether it is right or not. Also are the charts showing relevant data to projects. Sometimes disconnect between how a chart is set up and what it means. Would be great if project leads could poke around in there, spot any obvious duplicates.
- There will be work on the tool in Q1, and bring Insights team to the TAC in Q2, present what’s coming up.
- David: was at LF Member Summit recently, meeting of exec directors of LF foundations, LFX folks presented upgrades to the platform. Was then said “you will need to present to ASWF since they are one of your toughest critics!”. Ahead of this meeting, would be good to provide actionable feedback. We are the litmus test!
- John: if there are helpful charts that could be added that’s good as well. But don’t pay attention to “best practices score” right now.
- Eric R: in OTIO we have our own GH org, handful of repos that have different support models, is this reflected? John: we can add an org or individual repos, DPEL has similar issues. That will be fixed. OpenEXR also has multiple repos under a project.
- JC: how should we provide feedback? In the past I have created tickets, is that the right place, or should we provide the feedback in one place?
- John: could be dropped onto existing ticket? Some we could fix, some could be escalated? Issue #920 in TAC repo.
TAC Chair / Vice Chair for 2025
- John: Larry was voted as first vice chair, getting ready for first “rotation”. Larry will step in from vice chair to chair role. Carol has come forward with interest in vice chair, no one else has stepped up, anyone else?
- Kimball will still be part of the TAC, thank you for all your work and leadership!
- Kimball: this is a great community, not so much “leadership” as much as trying to help as much as possible. We have more to do!
- David: thank you Kimball!
- John: we will take vote offline since we don’t have quorum of voting members (12 present / 13 missing)
Evolving our working groups program
- CI WG likely a project level
- Language Interop: TAC can decide on that
- Lack of representation on TAC from WGs
  - We have concept of long term WG, so you get to “stick around”
  - Could those have a TAC rep?
- JF: what about WGs vs non-graduated projects?
- Michael M: when we formed first WG, there was a concept of TAC sponsorship. Currently no process to make sure that TAC sponsor is still around. What does it mean to be a “semi permanent” WG, for instance Cory has been sponsor of USD WG.
- Larry: there’s a special TAC vote to elevate WG to voting status, that should be doled out judiciously. Not all WG have the purpose / needs. Canonical example that should have is the D&I WG, they are long term, doing important work, and doing public work on behalf of ASWF. They really should have a say in the direction. Whereas more “usual” WG that isn’t as big as a project may not need to have that representation. “Safety valve” to avoid a project that’s been going on for years that still does have vote vs WG.
- Cory: if a WG is elevated to a project, it should have a TAC rep with a vote.
- John: we can chose a better name than “long term WG” which is a bit of a mouthful, but concept would still be the same. USD calls them SIGs.
- Eric E: can we let a WG run longer than a year without a TAC rep? We don’t want to force ending the work, even if there’s no need for a TAC rep? John: “may opt to” leaves leeway for TAC to get a second year.
- John: does that seem like an acceptable way to handle that? Larry: as long as the TAC can make those decisions, decouple the second year vs TAC rep decisions.
- John: will do a language change in the WG definition, will try to put pieces in place and TAC can react and approve.
- Larry: an inventory of our usual criteria, is it just a small checklist, or would need to do a lot of work? Don’t want to shove a bunch of additional work at WGs, maybe not every is ready to have extra work added to their plate. CI is a strong contender of what this is meant to address, they have been running for a long time and we don’t want them to stop.
Anyone can participate in the upcoming security evals, reach out to Cary or (?)
OpenVDB review January 8th (Ken)
- John: please keep us posted if that’s going to work
David: we’re considering if we should have more presence at SIGGRAPH Asia next year, so looking for any feedback if someone attended. Sounds like a good opportunity to go someplace we’re not as well known, but maybe other opportunities. Have it in the 2025 budget, that or any other candidates in that part of the world.
Larry: renewed appreciation of people like Kimball joining from “challenging” timezones. Not sure what to do about that long term. Middle of the day Pacific time is earliest possible for Pacific, and earliest for Europe. Not sure how to make it easier for people in those locations. John: challenge in a lot of our larger projects. Solution is mostly alternative timeslots, but no great solution. Larry: may only be a lateral step from “some people can never make it” to “half the people can only make it half of the time”.
David: pitch for our swag store, there’s a section for the Holidays, can put our favorite design on a Santa Hat for instance.
David: deep thank you for working on all of our projects, in a way that didn’t exist 6 years ago. Thank you!
Larry: is there a final time picked for Open Source Forum, time and format?
- David: putting final touches on that, discussion with venue tomorrow so everything is still to be confirmed, but likely to be Feb 13th at Walt Disney Animation studios, Nick Cannon agreed to host us. Changing the forum format, moving away from renting expensive locations to go to our members, more a round table discussion rather than a series of presentations to make it different from Open Source Days. For members only this time, we will have a web site which will be visible, but if someone wants to come, they will need to ask, and we’ll vet presentation, so all member companies (at all levels), and open to “friends of the foundation”, anyone who has participated, and anyone potential members who would like to “check us out”. Working the theme for the forum, “open source in the context of production pipelines that are changing with new technologies coming ahead” (so AI for instance), how will production pipelines change, and what are the places where open source projects can play a bigger role, and what parts of the pipeline could become open source.
- Kimball: the “Hype Pipe” is going to be a real topic, how to make real tools out of the AI tools. There are some really good tools in there, our studio is making some of them. Not on the image generation bandwagon, not sure that’s useful for “premier” content.
- David: with all the hype about AI, should have seen some of the more generic tools generated with AI to help in production pipelines for at least simple things like automated dust busting / wire removal / uprezing. Have you seen some of those tools in your companies?
- Kimball: of course. Also looking at whether we can help TDs write small Python snippets, but not producing pixels. David: as “flag bearer” for open source, any tech disruption is opportunity for open source to take part in the pipeline. What could be an opportunity for open source, is going to talk about that at a Forum possible? Kimball: have been talking about this for 18 months, for instance at Open Source Days. For open source opportunities for ASWF, we can help people gain confidence in rights management, maybe have a project for that. How do the weights of a model trained for a show stay with that show, help people navigate those waters. We can help people gain confidence in small tools.
- Scott (Chat): I feel like we have to be very careful about how AI is being used and advertised. Right now it is a very dirty word in some circles, and I can see how people can see this go against the D&I initiative.
- Kimball: the “AI” word is the source of the hype. People are ascribing unreasonable expectations.
- David: in our industry we have extra careful attitude, especially after the strikes. Kimball: provide tools around rights management so people are confident their images are managed in a careful way. Not sure how that looks like exactly. David: would like the forum to be a place to discuss this, come out with an outcome that would allow us to go a bit deeper into issues such as provenance. Other foundations in LF is doing such work (C2PA), some of our members (Adobe) have endorsed C2PA, maybe we could bring education and tools. We could have a short term WG come out of the discussions at the forum.
- Feb 13 coming fast, we’ll probe some of you to do anchor presentations, would like forum in 2 segments, one with short presentations to anchor the topic, and second section being interactive discussion with membership.
- Scott (chat): I think if a project were to come in and say “We are an AI project”, I think a key evaluation is looking at where the dataset came from and how this’ll affect users of the software (and those it may displace). For example, if someone open sources a wire removal tool and it removes all of the wire removal jobs, then do we want to associate ourselves to that/how do we want to associate ourselves to that?
- Michael: any conversations about content credentials between Adobe and legal team? Don’t know what work may have been done. David: there was a great presentation from Adobe, they have plugins for hosting AI models, including your own, and how you can subscribe to C2PA foundation. Not aware of direct discussions between LF legal in context of ASWF. C2PA working on spec to articular provenance. The answer about provenance from LF is to look at C2PA. It’s not a fix all solution, but it’s a good place to look for people addressing the issue. We could bring that to our forum.
- John: we could also ask them to present at TAC meeting, also any other LF project that could be relevant, we are happy to coordinate between projects when useful.
- David: at LF summit, there was a presentation about Open Source AI definitions, was a controversial topic. Not sure if these are recorded, lots of “passion” in Open Source world. Not sure we want to get into nitty gritty of AI (open source or not), but want to make sure our production pipelines evolve new open source opportunities.
- “Here” with Tom Hanks used AI tools for some of the de-aging.