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Hollywood Goes Open Source: Academy Teams Up With Linux Foundation To Launch Academy Software Foundation (variety.com)
Hollywood now has its very own open source organization: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has teamed up with the Linux Foundation to launch the Academy Software Foundation, which is dedicated to advance the use of open source in film making and beyond. From a report: The association's founding members include Animal Logic, Autodesk, Blue Sky Studios, Cisco, DNEG, DreamWorks, Epic Games, Foundry, Google Cloud, Intel, SideFX, Walt Disney Studios and Weta Digital. Together, they want to promote open source, help studios and others in Hollywood with open source licensing issues and manage open source projects under the helm of the Software Foundation. The cooperation between the Academy and the Linux Foundation began a little over two years ago, when the Academy's Science and Technology Council began to look into Hollywood's use of open source software. "It's the culmination of a couple of years of work," said Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) head Rob Bredlow in an interview with Variety this week.
One of the findings of that investigation: Almost everyone in Hollywood is using open source software in one way or another. An internal survey found that 80 percent of all companies were using open source. "It's a really big component of the motion picture industry," Bredlow said. Linux Foundation executive director Jim Zemlin argued that this kind of cooperation could be transformative for Hollywood. "I've seen this movie before in other industries," he punned, explaining that automotive companies had seen huge benefits from working together on open source projects.
One of the findings of that investigation: Almost everyone in Hollywood is using open source software in one way or another. An internal survey found that 80 percent of all companies were using open source. "It's a really big component of the motion picture industry," Bredlow said. Linux Foundation executive director Jim Zemlin argued that this kind of cooperation could be transformative for Hollywood. "I've seen this movie before in other industries," he punned, explaining that automotive companies had seen huge benefits from working together on open source projects.
Woooo! linux sux
of stinky open sores hippies on the west coast
pedowood
Working together is always better.
I bet this will lead to AAA movies being made in Blender, GIMP, and Inkscape.
Glad to see an industry obsessed about preventing people making free copies of their shit is using software that is freely copied...
There's a difference between works used as tools and works used as mass entertainment. The featured article acknowledges a deep divide between movie studios and the free software community over digital restrictions management. But even if a studio puts DRM on its entertainment products, that need not extend to putting DRM on tools.
" 'I've seen this movie before in other industries,' he punned [...]"
Not a pun.
Disney now owns ILM, they also own Pixar, and a few other animation studios who have been at the forefront of open-source film-making tools for decades. Disney knows quite well the value of open-source software to digital moviemakers. This is no surprise at all if you think about it. It helps Disney bring new tools and talent under their wing by pushing it out into the open under the guise of helping everyone make better movies.
Their hardware simply isnt up to the job any more, Cook has not only dropped the ball, he's kicked it out of the stadium. So its no surprise studios are moving over to commodity PCs. I'm guessing they already have a lot of unix based tools and apps so moving to Windows would be a royal PITA (not to mention the security issues) making Linux the obvious alternative.
Why does it surprise you given their Apple ties?
https://opensource.apple.com/
Here's a bunch of source code they release, including in-house stuff they release as open source.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
... that the movies will be open source too?
Yeah they don't want to pay for licensed software but gladly keep charging end users for accessing their content.
The year of the Linux desktop!
They do this so they can farm out every scene to a different CG startup contractor, who then loses money, and goes bankrupt, while the movie studio rakes in the cash.
ILM (George Lucas), Pixar, and others have been using Gimp for decades. They created a fork specifically for movies called FilmGimp. It was later renamed CinePaint.
I already play all my video using open source software. What a shame that it's impossible to buy movies that work with open source players, though. Perhaps they're going to start selling to customers, instead of continuing to insist that customers are required to get the files from pirates?
Any recommendations for open source video editing for film, YouTube, or anywhere inbetween? I learned how to use Adobe Premier in college but it's way too expensive to use on my hobby projects.
Sure, they're comfortable cozying up to "open source" (note: they don't say FREE and open source software, or FOSS), but that's everyone in the world who uses LAMP and other FOSS projects -- whether they realize it or not.
What would be meaningful and newsworthy is if the Academy (and Hollywood in general including the MPAA) added a covenant not to use the people who contribute to FOSS and to help FOSS prosper, grow, and be better funded by sponsors.
Ehud Gavron
Tucson AZ
I nod my head in the affirmative to recognize Hollywood's gesture. This is a positive progressive move on their part. We should all feel good about this.
Don't trust them. Don't. Ever.
That was happening 20 years ago. Back then, startup VFX companies were building their own render farms out of commodity PC's and 3Dmax. They didn't care about the failure rate vs. reliability against a high-end workstation. A cluster of five commodity PC's matched the reliability/performance of one workstation/server. Renderfarm management software took care of the rest such as making use of idle PC's.
There are many open source libraries like OpenEXR (for high dynamic range images). It saves an great deal of pain if everyone can use the same image loaders/savers rather than having a dozen different variations based on what each company interprets the specification as the most commonly used features).
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
An internal survey found that 80 percent of all companies were using open source
If the actual question is about having a least one opensource application in their systems, then the answer is probably 100%, with the remaining 20% is probably just not being aware
Okay, pal. Release your stuff as open source first, then we can talk.