This group seems very new and i'm somehow the first one to post. That being said, what projects would we like to pursue? I would very much like to be a part of whatever we come up with on here.

I recall 3d blender started as proprietary then made open-source via buyout.

Any chance this foundation could do the same with ToonBoom?

Thank you for listening.

Hi Jordan,

  Thanks for writing and your interest. One of the first items of business for the new ASWF will be to create the "project submission process". This will allow new and existing projects to be submitted to the ASWF, allow them to be evaluated to insure they are a fit into the mission and resources, and then accepted into the ASWF. Our conversations to date have been around some critical existing projects for the media business whose maintainers have expressed interest. Projects like OpenEXR, OpenColorIO and OpenVDB have been discussed so far. There are a lot more, but the ASWF will have to evaluate each to make sure the resources to host the community are in place to take on more projects.

  To get some background on how the Linux Foundation generally approaches project submissions, you might like reading this presentation by Chris Aniszczyk (https://www.slideshare.net/caniszczyk/bringing-an-open-source-project-to-the-linux-foundation). Each organization under the LF (of which ASWF is one) specifies their own submission process so the ASWF may have some customization, but I think those slides provide some good background.

  Hope that help.

Sincerely,

Rob Bredow

  

I'm told that IP hinders if not entirely obviates the possibility of creating a reasonable open-source DRM solution. That may well be the case.

In addition to that, the point of security is to protect the user from external attackers. But in the DRM threat model, the user is the attacker essentially and the rights owner is the defender.

Most (streaming) DRM approaches simply try to hide the key and make it time-bound. But in cryptography it's hard to make that anything other than an all or nothing proposition. How can the user be trusted to decrypt the asset and not take advantage of access to the unencrypted data? Are there any frameworks that can be applied to solve the problem and deliver (what I believe to be) a needed solution?

I could be totally wrong and maybe this approach has already been considered but what about finding a way to put the content on a blockchain with multi-signature smart contracts? Granted the information would live on the blockchain but access is only granted through a mutual agreement and everyone else would be locked out. I know blockchains are a buzzword lately but I do see a lot of potential in their application. I'm not sure if what you're proposing is more for a full-fledged streaming service like Netflix or simply giving someone from the press access from home for a preview. I think the blockchain approach might work better for a preview rather than a full streaming service.

Keep in mind that DRM isn't about encryption, that's just a means to an end. DRM is about preventing piracy and enabling flexible pricing models. If you come up with a better way of encrypting the data, without giving a better outcome to those goals, then it's a non-starter. Likewise if you come up with a better way of achieving those goals that doesn't use encryption at all, that's something worth considering.

Michael Hall
mhall119@...

High Fidelity recently (March 22,2018) announced an alliance for publishing assets such as identity, textures, 3D objects, animations and scenes over http using blockchain for the DRM. 

Content developers can already register their creations on the High Fidelity blockchain using our Digital Asset Registry (DAR), which tracks the provenance and ownership of each item. 

Founder Philip Rosedale is also the founder of Second Life, so his approach should be taken seriously. 

https://blog.highfidelity.com/janusvr-and-high-fidelity-found-virtual-reality-blockchain-alliance-3f894ee64ca7

Not likely. NaN (the company that was commercializing Blender had to go bankrupt first. The community stepped up and raised funds to free it from the holding company that controlled the IP after that happened.

That said, there are a number of promising 2D options available. Krita added animation support a couple years back and OpenToonz was released around that same time. And even Blender's Grease Pencil developments are making it a robust 2D animation till in its own right.

Hi there!

After attending the BoF presentation at SIGGRAPH, it seems like a lead starting point for project inclusion is mostly on the library side of things (as opposed to the application side). That makes sense. But maybe it would be wise to coordinate with some of the larger open source creative applications (Blender, Krita, Inkscape, GIMP) to establish them as an effective reference platform for these library projects. It seems to me that the primary need to pull that off would be to have someone in the ASWF side to coordinate communication with these project teams.

So what do folks think about this? Any gotchas or impediments that would make this unfeasible?

Seems like a good idea to me. They are there so might as well use them.

On Tue, Aug 14, 2018 at 11:10:17AM -0700, Jason van Gumster wrote:

Hi there!

After attending the BoF presentation at SIGGRAPH, it seems like a lead starting point for project inclusion is mostly on the library side of things (as opposed to the application side). That makes sense. But maybe it would be wise to coordinate with some of the larger open source creative applications (Blender, Krita, Inkscape, GIMP) to establish them as an effective reference platform for these library projects. It seems to me that the primary need to pull that off would be to have someone in the ASWF side to coordinate communication with these project teams.

So what do folks think about this? Any gotchas or impediments that would make this unfeasible?

Hi, are the slides or video of the presentation available by chance?

(Sorry for jumping in on the thread, I only learned of this group
yesterday.)

Bryce

I've attached the slides here as presented in the BOF as a PDF.

Enjoy,

Rob

I definitely think that is a good idea, I imagine there is a ton we can learn from those projects. 

Many of the previous mentioned projects have had very little interest in being given any guidance or direction from the vfx/film industry.  Some actively went out of their way to dissuade any contributions from us and many do not like that our projects use BSD like licenses for better inclusion of commercial software and can be quite hard core on using gpl.  I question whether software not born from vfx/film industry are actually interested in this?

When contributing to an Open Source project you have to build trust with the community around it before they will start to consider guidance and direction from you. It's an unfortunate fact that any sizable project will have a multitude of people who want to tell them how to build it, but who won't help them build it. To insulate themselves from this noise the maintainers most often require contributors to make some significant contributions based on their existing direction before giving them a voice in changing that direction.

If you want projects like Gimp, Inkscape, Krita or Blender to make big changes to meet your needs, start by contributing small changes that meet your (and their) needs. Fix bugs reported by others, implement some features already on their TODO list, add new file format support, etc. Once they know that you are committed to the future of the project, they will let you help guide and direct that future.

But if you come into an open source project with plans to up-end something they've dedicated years of their personal life to, you're not going to get a good reaction. It doesn't matter if you know what you're talking about, of if you have years of industry experience, or even if you're an expert in the thing you're proposing. If they don't trust that you're as committed to their project as they are, they're not going to let you steer.

Michael Hall
mhall119@...

The goals for the ASWF will eventually need to be more concrete to help clear some of the confusion going on now. I am having a difficult time trying to understand who ASWF is trying to assist with opening up to open source projects.

I am sure there are certain projects and libraries the ASWF has in mind at first. I imagine they are also open to other projects or ideas as this idea matures. If I was starting a new foundation and wanted to see the VFX open source community grow, I would take an inventory on where some open source projects are with questions like:

• how many people are in their core team
• how much funding do they currently receive to pay for things like hosting and developers
• how do they manage their project (repositories, CI, web hosting, bandwidth for downloads)
• how much time do they spend a month improving the their library/applciation
• what are the biggest issues they see from keeping their project going or expanding it

I am sure many of the applications that are focused on VFX users would be open to discuss and potentially collaborate. Most of them have mailing lists and use IRC for real-time communication.

I am one of the developers for Krita and would be open for any discussion or brainstorming that might need to happen
Scott Petrovic 

I agree with Scott, I feel like if we are looking to grow vfx open source we should be thinking about the points he listed especially since we have some of that structure already, the CI suite that the Linux foundation setup for example. Smaller OSS projects, or larger core projects with limited developer time would benefit from the support of the ASWF I think.