The Academy teams up with the Linux Foundation for open source tech

The Academy for Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), best known for running the Oscars, is diving into the technology world in a surprisingly new way. Together with the Linux Foundation, it's launching the Academy Software Foundation (ASWF), a neutral forum for the movie industry to organize and collaborate around using open source technology tools. And it's aiming to reach far beyond the film world and into other media industries, like virtual reality and sound engineering.

The ASWF is the result of a two-year investigation into how the film industry is using open source tools. The Academy discovered that 80 percent of the film world is already relying on open source technology, but it's been difficult to keep track of licensing and different versions of that software.

"As our open source industry matured, we realized that over time, by hosting all the software in a bunch of different commercial companies, there were actually some challenges with that and it wasn't aging particularly well," said Rob Bredow, executive creative director and head of Industrial Light and Magic (ILM), as well as the Academy's lead in the open source investigation, in an interview. "So things like developers changing between companies... Keeping track of all the different versions [of open source tools], making sure they can all communicate with each other, handling all the different licensing agreements, and all the mechanics of running the open source software for our industry was actually getting kind of complicated, and wasn't aging particularly well."

One example of the difficulties facing the film industry is ILM's EXR file format, which is widely supported, but it's been tough for other companies to contribute to it. And it doesn't help that the original developer left ILM. Even though there's an open source software library for EXR, Bredow says contributing to it is a slow process for outside developers, something that quietly discourages people from working on the format at all. Looking ahead, ILM is planning to make EXR a part of the Academy Software Foundation.



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