One of the biggest challenges in open source is project discovery. Often times when the Linux Foundation engages with project communities, they report that they are consistently finding new projects of interest to them – even if they are deep experts in a particular area. Being able to better understand not only what’s out there, but also the sustainability of these projects, is key to the maturity of an open source ecosystem.
In years past this effort has been centralized by the VFX community at the site openSourceVFX.org, maintained by Philippe Leprince, Larry Gritz, Rob Bredow, Chad Dombrova, and Jeppe Walther. As open source in the industry continues to grow with the establishment of the Academy Software Foundation (ASWF), the effort is now being scaled to a formal program maintained by the ASWF for the benefit of the entire VFX and animation open source communities.
The ASWF Landscape leverages infrastructure created for the CNCF Landscape and being leveraged by other foundations hosted at the Linux Foundation, and builds upon the earlier openSourceVFX.org effort to create a visualization of the entirety of the space. Additionally this resource is community maintained, meaning anyone can issue a pull request to add or update a listing.
Requirements to have a project included in this landscape are very simple; mainly projects should have a presence on GitHub, be active with at least 300 stars, and have been used successfully in the production of a film, television program, animated content or other projects within the scope of the ASWF. It also should have been designed specifically for the entertainment industry. Projects that become inactive are subject to removal.
We invite the entire community to participate in the sustainability of this resource, namely by…
- Reviewing the existing entries for accuracy, including to ensure entries are pointing to the correct GitHub repository and organization.
- Submit projects we are missing to be included.
- Share the landscape with others! You can include the landscape in presentations or promotion of your project ( both png and pdf versions are available ).
Big thanks to CNCF for the original project development of the landscapeapp, along with ASWF community members Larry Gritz and Jean-Francois Panisset for helping with the categorization and curation of the initial entries.
