The Academy Software Foundation and the Advantages of Open Source Software – VFX Voice

Open source software is used in the creation of every film, and every frame of film is stored digitally in open source software formats this software is critical infrastructure for both making and preserving movies, says Rob Bredow, Sr. Vice President, Executive Creative Director and Head of ILM, and Chair of the ASWF governing board.

The initial investigation included an industry-wide survey, a series of one-on-one interviews with key stakeholders, and three Academy Open Source Summits held at the Academy headquarters, according to Andy Maltz, Managing Director, Science and Technology Council, AMPAS, and ASWF Board Member.

Comments Bredow, They identified the key common challenges they were seeing with open source software. The first was making it easier for engineers to contribute to OSS with a modern software build environment hosted for free in the cloud. The second was supporting users of open source software by helping to reduce the existing version conflicts between various open source software packages. And the third was providing a common legal framework to support open source software.

The mission of the Academy Software Foundation, Bredow elaborates, is to increase the quality and quantity of contributions to the content creation industrys open source software base; to provide a neutral forum to coordinate cross-project efforts; to provide a common build and test infrastructure; and to provide individuals and organizations a clear path to participation in advancing our open source ecosystem.

The ASWF has achieved solid early acceptance, with AWS (Amazon Web Services), Animal Logic, Autodesk, Blue Sky Studios, Cisco, DNEG, DreamWorks, Unreal Engine, Google Cloud, Intel, Microsoft, Movie Labs, Netflix, NVIDIA, Sony Pictures, Walt Disney Studios, Weta Digital, Foundry, Red Hat, Rodeo Visual Effects Company and Warner Bros. already on board.

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The Academy Software Foundation and the Advantages of Open Source Software - VFX Voice