Academy Software Foundation Technical Advisory Council (TAC) Meeting - April 2, 2025

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 / OCIO 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

David Morin - Academy Software Foundation
Emily Olin - Academy Software Foundation
John Mertic - The Linux Foundation
Michelle Roth - The Linux Foundation
Yarille Ortiz - The Linux Foundation

Other Attendees

Rob Rowe - Cinepaint
Doug Walker - Autodesk / OCIO
Jim Helman - MovieLabs
Jim Geduldick - SMPTE RIS
Andy Gones - Netflix
Alyssa Alexis - SIGGRAPH
Lorna Dumba - Framestore
JT Nelson - - Pasadena Open Source consortium / SoCal Blender group
Spencer Stephens - Spencer Stephens, Zero Trust WG
Deke Kincaid - Digital Domain

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Agenda

General Updates
- Dev Days - May 15, 2025 #966
- OpenQMC #434
- SLP Volunteer Opportunities #992
- Rename project lifecycle stage ‘Adopted’ to ‘Graduated’ #999
- DigiPro CFP closed 5/16 #1003
- Open Source Days 2025 #1005
Annual Review: Rez #492
Planning Session for TAC #972

Notes

General Updates
- Dev Days - May 15, 2025 #966
  - Larry: be there or be square!
- OpenQMC #434
  - Eric E: no update
- SLP Volunteer Opportunities #992
- Rename project lifecycle stage ‘Adopted’ to ‘Graduated’ #999
  - All our projects are already “Adopted”, other Foundations use “Graduated”, we should codify to “Graduated”. Proposal would be to change from “Adopted” to “Graduated”, nothing else changes.
  - Read “Adopted” as “Adopted by the Software Foundation”.
  - “Graduated” may sound like “you are done, nothing else to do”?
  - Is the word word “Accepted” have connotations we couldn’t use? Carol: we can dissect these words, can take recommendations, but feedback are confused by “Adopted” and that relates to projects “in incubation” yet used widely in the industry. We’re trying to resolve this ambiguity, not opposed to other options, but don’t want to keep using “adopted”.
  - John: don’t have to decide this today, we can be bring this up at next TAC meeting.
- Eric R: Netflix Representation Turnover
  - Andy Jones from Netflix, will be handing over TAC seat responsibility over next 2 meetings.
  - Andy: recognize several of you. At Netflix I am product manager for our VFX platform, was in the industry for 20 years before, including Psyop, before that at Pixel Liberation Front. Best known for Cryptomatte project. Background is engineering, drifted into other roles such as VFX supervision.
  - Eric R: will still be around including for OTIO.
- DigiPro CFP closed 5/16 #1003
  - Closes on May 16, would like to see some of our projects here. Let Emily know if you are presenting.
  - Larry: OpenPBR publication just came out yesterday. Jonathan: can you clarify what publication? Larry: the paper in Journal of Computer Graphics. Jonathan: not restricted to OpenPBR, a new diffuse model which is energy preserving, the core diffuse model in OpenPBR, hopefully will get picked up by other uber shaders. First official publication, previously pointed to OpenPBR implementation. In MaterialX 1.39. John: maybe we could have blog announcement? Larry: a lof of coordination and inspiration for that development was on the channels and OpenPBR people. Jonathan: you are right, discussions happened on OpenPBR and MaterialX Slack, and was added to MaterialX and OpenPBR at same time, paper formalizes the shading model, including some optimization strategies. Larry: lurking on those Slack channels was witnessing the development of these ideas. John: projects should flag us about such opportunities for promotion. Jonathan: took it for granted, but this is really an ASWF win.
- Open Source Days 2025 #1005
  - Sunday August 10th at SIGGRAPH, at the Marriot Pinnacle. Ahead of the game on prepping schedule. CFP will happen April 9th to May 18th, registration opens April 9th. Day of BoFs on August 11th, virtual town halls before. Link for BoF / Town Hall registration. In the past had last minute speaker additions, would be great to have full VTH / BoF schedule at beginning of June so we have time to promote. Choose your time now, add speakers later, but please do it by May 30th.
  - Town Hall / BoF Sign Up Spreadsheet
  - Also thanks for quarterly updates, will add OpenPBR paper.
Annual Review: Rez #492
- Stephen Mackenzie
- Rez Annual Review Slide Deck
- Rez Project Info
  - Jean-Christophe and I have been co chairing TSC
- Project Origins
  - V1 implementation at Dr.D Studios circa 2011
  - Author previously at MPC London
- Incubation to Adoption Report
  - Some new items ticked off
  - Asterisk is that more work could be done, but fine for graduation
  - Was prematurely thinking it could be adopted this year, but limited by available TSC time
  - Biggest development was OpenSSF badge project, as well as our process documentation
  - Need to get TSC to focus on this, finish a handful of OpenSSF requirements
  - Should be able to come back mid cycle for graduation
  - Growth Assessment: need to get help from John, not sure what this step contains, and who performs this
- Contributor Growth
  - Doesn’t include all ASWF history, came in late 2022, so looking over all time
  - 2-3 year cadence “see saw”
  - Easier to grow when you are a smaller project
  - “gut feeling” that a lot of smaller studios are trying out Rez, wonder how the contribution graph looks now.
  - Total contributors graph from LFX Insights vs Active Contributors
  - Have an “Adopters” file, a few recently gone studios. Very incomplete, some people asking early Rez questions in Slack / mailing list, but not easy to get whether they are actually using it. Pipeline TDs may not be in a position to say officially whether they are using it.
  - Several new names since last year, including some big ones. Will ping individual people on Slack to ask.
- Recent Releases
  - Last review
    - Python 2 drop, slowly, then hard cut
  - New
    - Synchronous payload caching, many smaller items (2024/10)
    - Small bugfix for backwards compat
- Recent Developments
  - Synchronous payload caching support
  - New “testing” object for use in rez-test
  - “default_build_process” setting introduced
  - Convert Windows registry queries to winreg pypi module
  - Many shell-specific bugfixes, mostly in Windows (cmd, PowerShell), default is now PowerShell
  - New adopters file, contributing.md updates, release.md updates
  - More legacy py-specific code removed
  - Numerous documentation updates (huge props to Bryce Gattis)
  - #rez-wg-config-launcher - config-oriented sub-group created
    - Some people see a way to manage configuration details. Rez packages can control OCIO config. Or tie to pipeline progress / stages. Rez wasn’t designed to be a configuration tool, was designed to create software environments, not manage what you are asking for. Lots of discussion around how studios configure how their studio environments inter-operate.
  - OpenSSF badge progress (2023-2024 delta)
    - 91% -> 94% towards passing
    - 71% -> 83% towards silver
    - 52% -> 78% toward gold
- COCOMO numbers
  - Maybe glitch in LFX Insights, likely because we have 18 vendored PyPI packages in our repo
- Contribution Dashboard (LFX Insights)
  - Jean-Christophe has been leading contributions (55.73%)
  - Company association data is nice to see, but usually every individual contributing to Rez doing it on their own contribution time, not on company time. Some company want to contribute their own development, but hasn’t been merged in a long time. Maybe data can be made more accurate by associating whether someone is contributing via a ICLA vs CCLA? Maybe that’s a way to clarify the data. Otherwise a little odd, for instance Anaconda does give JC a day here and there, but most of his contributions should be on his own time.
- Last Year Top Requests
  - From Virtual Town Hall
  - Better Docs
    - 6 documentation PRs opened, 4 closed
  - Better Windows shell support
    - Handful of PRs merge with improved Windows shell handling
    - Biggest PR on this has fizzled, original contribution company is defunct (correctly interpolates slash order). Hoping to finish it up
  - Better rez-pip
    - JCM’s rez-pip2 is getting good testing and fixing of edge cases. now up to version 0.3.2
    - Should someday negotiate migrating this to ASWF
  - Cloud package repositories
  - Caching-oriented features and fixes
    - 3.2.0 introduced synchronous payload caching feature - more to do, but great start
  - Robust starter rez recipe set
  - Incomplete / dated knowledge of who and how many use rez
    - some decent refreshed data on this from new contributors
    - …
- Project difficulties
  - Maintainer time - JC is doing too much of the heavy lifting
    - Some of this is situational, some of it isn’t
    - Still seeking additional TSC member
      - Had promising lead, but fizzled
  - Estimate that nearly all contributors are doing so on “individual” time, not company time
  - Advancing certain key features (that everyone badly wants) requires some deep technical knowledge and motivation
  - Docs (always, but at least there was a lot of movement here last year)
  - Tests need improvement and cleanup, the current setup harms dev velocity
  - Overhaul rez quickstart guide, ideally before a chosen dev day
  - Way behind on our written meeting notes
- Areas project could use help
  - Still seeking additional TSC member
  - Some hand holding to help us try out Dev Days
  - …
- Feedback on working with ASWF
  - Most issues with contributor time and energy
  - Nothing is drastically wrong with the way this is working, just wish we had more time
  - Not sure what this says about the situation
  - There isn’t a better place for Rez to be than the ASWF
  - But need to push forward more efficiently / consistently
  - TSC needs to figure out, more than ASWF
- TAC Open Discussion
  - John: thank you, great presentation
  - Happy to connect with you to finish passing badge. Stephen: yes, can we tick boxes… Also have written security policy, just needs to be merged.
  - John: trying to work with LFX Insights team
  - Stephen: if there is anything to be critical of, it seems ASWF hasn’t done much to account for FTE requirement / distribute work around. If you were to rank projects by member company support, Rez might be at the bottom of the list. Not necessarily wrong, member companies may not need Rez. It may still be appropriate for small studios, the ones that need Rez the most, but don’t have resources to contribute engineer time. Rez and OpenCue may have most in common, it’s an actual studio tool. Software vendors don’t have a need for Rez. John: I’ve seen this before in projects that are toolkits for a specific audience.
  - JF: one short of quorum
  - Larry: are we keeping track of whether voting members are present? John: we have the ability to do that, we haven’t done the analysis in a little while. Maybe do a nudge to people who may need a new TAC rep?
Planning Session for TAC #972
- Using pollev
  - Issue with “poll is full”
- What should be the top TAC priorities for 2025?
  - Identify opportunities to coordinate efforts between projects: 28%
  - Better leverage the CI WG: 12%
  - Prioritized view of open source gaps / opportunities: 12%
  - Bring in outside presenters to present to the TAC on relevant topics
- Should we use LFX voting instead? David: let’s fix this and redo the vote
- John: OK, this is a trial run, we’ll redo it.
- Larry: David makes it look easy! Carol: can we send it out to TAC voting folks?
- David: pollev is really good for live meetings, we just need to fix the license. There’s a value to doing these polls live, with a follow up discussion. Not so good for an offline survey, there are other tools for that. We should do more of these, and they are valuable, since you capture an opinion after a presentation when everything is top of mind. Extremely useful, and you save a lot of time to getting to a consensus. We’ll make pollev work
- Carol: seems like the best tool to do this live, but not everyone makes it to TAC meeting, so want to get a representative view, if we only get half the members.
- David: a good point, it’s a discussion with the people who are here, then we can send a survey, especially when we don’t have quorum.
- John: let’s redo this next time. Do the items A-H match what we discussed last time? Did anything get missed / misrepresented?
Next meeting: OpenEXR review. Cary: we’ll be there. Also will try to reschedule OpenLensIO on April 16th.
April 30th: USD WG, we’ll make sure they know they are up.