14 ms·

Disney Open Source

558 points by craigkerstiens 10y ago

Pulce 10y ago
Good. I have downloaded and viewed a lot of WD movies with torrents (I'm a near homeless man in Italy, no money to buy/rent DVD). Now I can give back something contributing to the open source project.
- giuscri 10y ago
  Can I ask you why you're near homeless? It's because you find hard to find a job?, or you've accumulated debt you're struggling to exinct? I'm from Italy too but I'm a student and I'm curious: what are the troubles a hacker has in Italy? — assuming you worked in tech. I know it's rude to ask, I understand if you don't mind to answer. :)
  - Pulce 10y ago
    Thanks, I'll write to you soon. edit: :)
    - Taylor_OD 10y ago
      I'm also curious if you are open to sharing.
      - Pulce 10y ago
        Yes :) I'll write it toworrow!
        Pulce 10y ago
        It's here: pulce.neocities.org Have fun :)
agentgt 10y ago
I was expecting to see some Squeak links (OSS Smalltalk) but I guess no one at Disney is using it now? I think it was the Go.com group ala Alan Kay that was doing something with it internally (I'll need to do some googling but it appears the group moved to ycombinator according to wikipedia... my memory sucks).
- qwertyuiop924 10y ago
  If you must Squeak to a company, attribute it to Apple. That's where the project started. The team behind it then moved to Walt Disney Imagineering (Disney's R&D Arm). From then, the team's corporate sponsorship becomes a tangled mess, but according to Wikipedia, they've been with HP Labs, SAP Labs, and... Y-Combinator. Well, that's a name I didn't expect to see there.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
smegel 10y ago
They make light-hearted animations, but their software looks seriously hardcore.
alexkavon 10y ago
Can't wait for the Mickey Mouse repo in 2024.
- gkoberger 10y ago
  Why? Disney has invested countless dollars into Mickey Mouse over the past 89 years. It's not like the Happy Birthday song, being hoarded without innovation purely for profit; they're actively expanding/investing/improving and making billions of people happy. Why should random companies get to legally print knockoff Mickey t-shirts just because enough time has passed?
  - BinaryIdiot 10y ago
    > Why should random companies get to legally print knockoff Mickey t-shirts just because enough time has passed? Because our Copyright laws are all sorts of outdated and ridiculous in various ways.
  - s-phi-nl 10y ago
    Because that's what the US Constitution requires [1]: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries" (Emphasis added) [1] https://www.constituteproject.org/constitution/United_States_of_America_1992#35 https://www.constituteproject.org/constitution/United_States...
    - cyphar 10y ago
      Copyright is limited. It's just that the Mickey Mouse collective is constantly getting laws passed that push back how far away "limited" is. It's more like a pay-as-you-go scheme for unlimited copyright while skirting around the US constitution. And of course, because Disney has enough money they can also convince Congress to apply the law changes retroactively.
      - macintux 10y ago
yazaddaruvala 10y ago
Just an FYI: Always be careful! I opened up a couple of these repos and some seem to have modifications on their licenses. Some like OpenEXR say "BSD" but don't actually have a license file. Others like, Ptex and Partio, have no mention of a license at all. Edit: For anyone wondering why this is an issue. From a legal standpoint, there is a huge difference between being able to read the code, and being able to use the code.
- napsterbr 10y ago
  > why this is an issue The fact that this comes from Disney does not help, too.
  - fsloth 10y ago
    Huge chunks of modern computer graphics production rendering infrastructure is based on open codebases. I don't get the snark. The visualization studios (Disney, Sony, etc) work on open source is a fantastic example how open sourcing codebases can be a win-win-win situation.
- ncannon 10y ago
  All those you mention do have licenses. OpenEXR - https://github.com/openexr/openexr/blob/develop/OpenEXR/LICENSE https://github.com/openexr/openexr/blob/develop/OpenEXR/LICE... Ptex - http://ptex.us/documentation.html http://ptex.us/documentation.html Partio - https://github.com/wdas/partio/blob/master/src/doc/license.txt https://github.com/wdas/partio/blob/master/src/doc/license.t...
  - yazaddaruvala 10y ago
    Cool, I'm glad, but still always be careful. Meanwhile, I don't really have access to a lawyer and I'm curious: 1. Should I trust a license which is not distributed with the source code (i.e. on the hopefully official website)? 2. Should I trust a license which is in a sub-directory? My initial assumption is that, only that sub-directory is licensed.
curiouscat321 10y ago
I hope Disney does more of this! They're a tech company in a lot of ways. I believe they're using Rails for their site (which would make it amongst the biggest Rails sites in the world) and I hope they release some Rails stuff too!
- JustinGarrison 10y ago
  I hope so too. As an employee and an open source enthusiast. There are many people inside the (very large) company pushing for more of this. Many of them have replied in this thread. :)
lima 10y ago
OpenSubdiv is a game changer in FOSS 3d software. Blender is already using it: https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Ref/Release_Notes/2.76/OpenSubdiv https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Ref/Release_Notes/2.7... Demo: https://youtu.be/dzIl_S-qHIQ?t=115 https://youtu.be/dzIl_S-qHIQ?t=115
- JustSomeNobody 10y ago
  Like the entire game has changed, rules, board, pieces and everything? Or like the game has been somewhat improved?
  - vidarh 10y ago
    Check out the video. In the example, rendering of an animated model goes from 0.25fps without it, to 4fps with it using CPU rendering, or up to 40fps using CUDA for the example model.... I'd say that is large enough to have the potential to fundamentally alter how people work.
    - FigmentEngine 10y ago
      "fundamental" seems to imply a magnitude shift. 100x seems the minimum bar IMHO. Otherwise its just decimate..
      - ChristianGeek 10y ago
        In this case the frame rate went from 0.25 fps to 40 fps, a 160x improvement, so "fundamental" it is.
        vanderZwan 10y ago
        Also, diminishing returns apply: going from 0.25 fps to 40 fps is a game changer when doing interactive modelling, in the sense that only one of the two can be considered interactive. Going 40 fps to 4000 fps wouldn't really be make things much better (I'm sure artists would simply push the tools to bring that frame rate down again, and any improvement to render speed obviously would matter for final exports, but you get what I mean).
shredwheat 10y ago
This is a showcase of larger open source projects used in the visual effects and animation industry. Several of them are contributed to by Disney engineers, but most people would not consider these Disney projects. Disney has open sourced and released some impressive open source projects over the years, and it's exciting to see their endorsement on these others.
- ykl 10y ago
  Project: Originating and maintaining organization USD: Pixar OpenSubdiv: Pixar jss-api-gem: Pixar Munki: WDAS Reposado: WDAS SeExpr: WDAS Ptex: WDAS Partio: WDAS Dynamica: WDAS BRDF Explorer: WDAS OpenEXR: ILM Alembic: ILM and Sony Imageworks So which one of these is not a Disney project, considering they all originated from and are maintained by Disney engineers?
  - berkut 10y ago
    Alembic was originally Sony's thing, which ILM started using in their early Katana days because their own file format wasn't good enough for use with Katana (random access and lazy loading). Sony gave it to ILM to start using, and then open-sourced it. I'd quibble that while ILM and Pixar employees are technically now Disney employees, it's not as if they work for Walt Disney Animation Studios directly, so it's not as clear cut as you make out.
    - ykl 10y ago
      Fair enough about Alembic. ILM and Pixar are very much Disney employees though, as in employees of the wider Walt Disney Company (which this page is for; the specific page for WDAS is here [1]). If you get a Silver Pass and your pay comes from TWDC's bank account, I'm pretty sure you are a Disney employee. WDAS, Pixar, and ILM are all just individual subsidiaries under the wider TWDC umbrella. [1] https://www.disneyanimation.com/technology/opensource https://www.disneyanimation.com/technology/opensource
- n1gels 10y ago
  I run Disney's open source program. This page is a showcase of all projects from Disney business units. It's currently slanted towards animation because these organizations have been the most prolific to date. We (Disney) expect to broaden the range of projects, to other types of open source projects, for example Dragonchain https://github.com/dragonchain/dragonchain https://github.com/dragonchain/dragonchain
santaclaus 10y ago
Super cool! I'd be curious to see what bits of software here are from WDAS vs ILM vs Pixar.
- qwertyuiop924 10y ago
  ...Quite a few of them. IIRC, Alembic is from ILM, but I know it's not from Disney. But a lot of those are joint efforts from all over the industry.
- a_e_k 10y ago
  Pixar: USD, OpenSubdiv, jss-api-gem WDAS: Reposado, SeExpr, Ptex, Partio, Dynamica, BRDF Explorer ILM: OpenEXR, Alembic (with Sony)
  - berkut 10y ago
    Alembic was actually mostly Sony originally - ILM were mostly just a name on the ticket, and ILM started using the format because it was much more Katana-friendly (random access and lazy-loading) than their current format, and they were starting to use Katana at the time. The first version of Alembic was pretty much just Sony's internal geometry format renamed.
    - bleair 10y ago
      I'm not sure what you're referring to as "first version". Did you work on Katana at Sony, and are you referring to the choice to use HDF5? The idea (a hierarchical organization of geom prims and transforms) was very similar between ILM and Sony. The library API organization (for better and worse) and hashing more more ILM but it was a pretty close collaboration all along the way.
      - berkut 10y ago
        Version 1.0. I was at The Foundry while this was happening. ILM struggled to use Katana with their existing file format. I'd be worried if the idea wasn't similar - it was the implementation that mattered, and ILM's older format wasn't very good at random access and lazy loading (which were things needed for efficient use in Katana). Alembic 1.0 was very close to Sony's Taco format rebranded.
baccredited 10y ago
Steps: 1. Fire all the old programmers 2. Make them train their cheap H-1B visa replacements 3. Open source some code 4. Have a magical day! http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/04/us/last-task-after-layoff-at-disney-train-foreign-replacements.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/04/us/last-task-after-layoff-...
- bmuon 10y ago
  Did the NYTimes actually do any research for that piece? H1Bs are required to have a higher salary than average precisely to avoid that from happening
  - qaq 10y ago
    It's calculated of some predefined averages that are way lower than actual market rates. Most H1B's I know are making pretty much market rate or within 5-10% of market rate though. How do they find people to work for about half I have no clue.
  - pzenger 10y ago
    I believe it is based on the average for the country, which is much lower than the average in certain areas, like California.... But I may be wrong.
    - lfittl 10y ago
      Pretty sure the labor certification and prevailing wage requirement is on a county / city basis (i.e. somewhat related to the actual local wages), see also https://www.dol.gov/whd/immigration/h1b.htm https://www.dol.gov/whd/immigration/h1b.htm
    - JustSomeNobody 10y ago
      Hope it isn't based on what the government pays developers. I've seen some java devs making upper 30s to low 40s within the past few years. That's just crazy.
dragonshed 10y ago
The DIY style management software for OS X/macOS[1][2] is interesting. I knew commercial packages existed for this sort of thing (and more), but I'm fascinated that Disney admins & engineers chose to implement their own Software Update Servers. [1]https://github.com/munki/munki https://github.com/munki/munki [2]https://github.com/wdas/reposado https://github.com/wdas/reposado
- zalmoxes 10y ago
  FYI, a large number of enterprise orgs and Edus use Munki and Reposado to manage Macs. Among these: Google(their fork is called Simian: https://github.com/google/simian https://github.com/google/simian) and Facebook. Not only is Munki used across a large number of organizations, it also happens to arguable be the best current software management tool for Macs. Another project maintained by the same group of MacAdmins is AutoPKG https://github.com/autopkg/autopkg https://github.com/autopkg/autopkg
- brazzledazzle 10y ago
  There's definitely much easier to use tools out there in terms of the UX, learning curve and some features that just aren't in scope for munki/reposado/autopkg but in many respects the commercial competition has been (and still is) playing catch up. Back when it was first introduced the divide was even greater.
- chucky_z 10y ago
  How tied to Disney is munki and reposado? I use the Server app, but the functionality is continually hamstrung and honestly these open-source apps probably have more functionality than was ever in Server. It's really interesting to hear that they could be tied so closely to Disney though.
  - brazzledazzle 10y ago
    As far as how tied to Disney they are: the project lead and initial sole developer (others chip in quite a bit now) is an employee of Disney. My impression is that he's open to changing things but not if those changes interfere or complicate their deployment at Disney. So I'd say definitely Disney-prioritized rather than a straight up community project. Affiliated projects like AutoPkg are community driven and somewhat tool agnostic. I think what you should use depends on your available time, inclination and mindset. I meant for this to be short but it ended up being ridiculously long. Sorry about that. Hopefully it helps save you and anyone else the time required to get a broad understanding of this space. tl;dr at the bottom. I wouldn't bother with Server App. It's complete crap. Maybe useful for >10 macs but I'm honestly not sure if that's even true given all the ways it can totally shit the bed on you. Not well maintained. Probably best to think of it more as a reference implementation for 3rd parties developing an MDM solution. If you have time for the learning curve, want to apply the configuration as code/automated testing mindset and want/need to save money go with the open source tools. Don't expect to be able to commit the commercial versions to source control. Munki+Reposado+Margarita+AutoPkg for sure: Munki: Nothing touches it terms of the core/engine's package installation abilities. Repo is configured by the admin/tools like autopkg so it's just a static repo that can be hosted by any web server. Customizable self-service app that's very similar to the app store app. Reposado: Let's you do pipeline/canary testing/one-some-many deployments of your official Apple updates since they can rarely mess things up on their own but more frequently break some software. Margarita: Web UI for managing Reposado, only needed if you want/need that or just don't want to deal with figuring out how to manage/automate it. AutoPkg: This is so amazing you'll want this even if you use something like Casper but it was designed with Munki in mind. Using recipes it downloads updates for software from the vendor's websites/repositories, repackages as necessary and can be configured to automatically add those as updates for your existing packages. So you can get security updates and force their installation long before your average laptop user bothers to update. You can do pipeline/canary testing/one-some-many deployments using your preferred CICD tool (Jenkins seems to be popular for this). Recipes are maintained in a community repo so even if a vendor changes their site and breaks things someone has probably noticed before you and provided a fix. Key differentiators for these: Open Source, configuration management as code, automation, testing, CICD, etc. Puppet, Chef, Ansible, Salt or GitHub's Boxen (Uses Puppet but has an opinionated layer on top): If you want more configuration management and distributing it via packages through Munki isn't your cup of tea use one of these in addition to Munki. Key differentiators: Open Source, configuration management as code, automation, testing, CICD, etc. If you want easy as pie and very SMB oriented take a look at JAMF's Bushel. It's clean looking and subscription based and probably the least amount of effort overall. It's cloud-only I believe, so if on-prem is a requirement look at the next one. Not sure if you can do custom packages or much in the way of config but you can definitely distribute Apple App store applications. Key differentiators: modern, easy to use and quick to get started with. Auto-magic enrollment of devices you buy (as long as they are through the same account). Distributed App Store apps. If you want more control and a decent GUI (particularly if you have a decent number of Macs) take a look at JAMF's Casper. Warning: The trial is limited to 14 days but you can purchase a 45 or 60 day trial+2 or 3 days of training for a mere ~$4K or $6K. Training I think is provided by a VAR/Partner. No you can't use it after that unless you buy it. Expect a hard and high touch sales experience since this is more or less enterprise software. There's a cloud version and on-prem version. On-prem will require some upkeep (MySQL instance to manage, java app that runs on tomcat, etc.). You should use AutoPkg with Casper too even if it's a bit annoying to get setup. Key differentiators: Big community with a lot of answers and advice that are often universal enough to be useful no matter what you're using. Very enterprise-y so good if you need that (contract, support, feel good sales pitch to management). Easy to use for junior admins or support people. Easy self-service that customizable per-person/group. Auto-magic enrollment of devices you buy (as long as they are through the same account). Note: The JAMF sales people might bring in a rep from Apple's Enterprise Support team during the sales process to talk about the benefits of Casper (they use it at Apple) as well as (surprise) pitch their enterprise support services and a package called enterprise connect. Enterprise connect is essentially a workaround for bad UX/bugs in Apple's directory services support that they want you to pay for. When the Apple rep told us that you'd be silly to use open source tools we asked about Google and Facebook and he replied, "Yeah... well they probably think they're pretty smart! Haha." Backpedaling ensued and he said, "Well of course they're smart, they just have different problems." When pressed about the problems Casper couldn't resolve for them he said "scale" after conferring with another person at Apple. There are others but either I don't know enough about them to offer any insight or they aren't worth mentioning for various reasons. tl;dr: Munki/Reposado/AutoPkg: If you can afford the learning curve and need/want the DevOps tools/automation/philosophy. Bushel: If you want easy, no hassle and automatic device enrollment, SMB. Casper: If you want a GUI, enterprise features and automatic device enrollment, easy self-service, have a decent number of Macs.
zump 10y ago
How can I apply for a job at Disney? Someone send me an email that won't lead to a black hole!!
- brianzelip 10y ago
  from the linked webpage's header: > Interested in working with us on projects like this and more? Check out our current job opportunities at http://disneycareers.com http://disneycareers.com.
- n1gels 10y ago
  Technology jobs at Disney http://disneytechjobs.com http://disneytechjobs.com
  - zump 10y ago
    Site is still terrible :/
jedberg 10y ago
I as really hoping all the projects would be named after Disney characters, because it would be fun to say, "I think we should run Mickey, but we may need to fork Donald to make it work in our environment".
- phkahler 10y ago
  I can think of many from Disney that I'd rather fork than Donald. ;-)
  - jedberg 10y ago
    I dunno, I prefer to eat duck over dog or mouse. ;)
    - phkahler 10y ago
      jedberg, we deserve the down votes (-4 for me. a personal record!). These are the kind of comments that have come to dominate slashdot - a formerly awesome site. Sorry HN, I couldn't help it this time. Now back to the higher quality discourse.
      - jedberg 10y ago
        I agree with you (I only got -3, but that is also an HN personal record).
- cooper12 10y ago
  No thanks, Disney has already done enough to fuck over the public domain via copyright. We don't need them using trademarks to fuck over developers too. Besides, I doubt their lawyers would want them to dilute their trademarks like that.
  - anchpop 10y ago
    Trademarks are only within a field. If Disney wanted to open-source something and trademark its name, they'd have to get a new trademark
sarreph 10y ago
After my microeconomics lectures, these are two words* I never thought I'd see together.[0] [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act *Yes, I am treating 'Open Source' as one word, you 'Disney Open' trolls.
6stringmerc 10y ago
Oh, so that's what the replacements that Disney outsourced and canned those US professionals will be using? Maybe not the most polite type of joke, but hey, I just saw that a judge recently smacked down the class action the terminated employees had submitted (using sound logic). Be wary of anything with Disney's fingerprints on it. They are - rightly or wrongly - seen as Public Enemy #1 to Copyright reform. Throwing some spare change into the pond of Open Source should be measured.
mrcactu5 10y ago
Pixar has a course through Khan academy. The algebra gets quite advanced! https://www.khanacademy.org/partner-content/pixar/animate https://www.khanacademy.org/partner-content/pixar/animate I don't mind if the images are too realistic -- just some good shading here and there
j0j0r0 10y ago
I work there, and am on the Disney Open Source Committee! We also just open sourced a hybrid public/private blockchain platform "Dragonchain" with some interesting features. https://github.com/dragonchain/dragonchain https://github.com/dragonchain/dragonchain Architecture document: https://dragonchain.github.io/doc/DragonchainArchitecture.pdf https://dragonchain.github.io/doc/DragonchainArchitecture.pd... Code is newly released, and rough around the edges. We're working to get the docs up to par and some Docker containers ready for ease of use. Feedback is welcome.
- random567 10y ago
  What do you actually use Dragonchain for within Disney? Why does Disney need a blockchain platform?
  - clarkmoody 10y ago
    I'm also curious to know the use case and am reminded of the "Do you need a blockchain?" flowcharts [1][2] [1] https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cn2zMbTWYAAQA6i.png https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cn2zMbTWYAAQA6i.png [2] https://media.licdn.com/mpr/mpr/shrinknp_400_400/AAEAAQAAAAAAAAfeAAAAJDUwODM3OTQzLWVmYjktNGYzZS1hNDIwLTkzZGIwNThiNTNmMw.jpg https://media.licdn.com/mpr/mpr/shrinknp_400_400/AAEAAQAAAAA...
  - lstamour 10y ago
    Just tossing out wild guesses/ideas: Theme parks maybe? Or tracking/trading movie ownership? Contracts? Points systems for games?
    - dllthomas 10y ago
      Most of those don't seem to benefit from block chain style decentralization (where you still need to talk to the network).
  - Shinchy 10y ago
    Disney Dollars possibly.
gdamjan1 10y ago
is it coincidence that disney gets on hacker news at the same time as they are "The empire strikes back: Disney to sue school that teaches lightsaber skills" http://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/oct/17/star-wars-disney-lightsaber-school-lawsuit http://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/oct/17/star-wars-disney... ???
tajen 10y ago
We don't need Disney to open-source their software. We need Volkswagen and various bogus companies to open-source the software of safety-sensitive material. Dangerous hardware, measurement tools (e.g. petrol stations, security cams), voting machines, droids... Disney's open-source is merely dry bread for the plebs: We'll take it but it's not advancing our situation.

558 points by craigkerstiens 10y ago

Pulce 10y ago

Good. I have downloaded and viewed a lot of WD movies with torrents (I'm a near homeless man in Italy, no money to buy/rent DVD). Now I can give back something contributing to the open source project.

giuscri 10y ago
Can I ask you why you're near homeless? It's because you find hard to find a job?, or you've accumulated debt you're struggling to exinct? I'm from Italy too but I'm a student and I'm curious: what are the troubles a hacker has in Italy? — assuming you worked in tech. I know it's rude to ask, I understand if you don't mind to answer. :)
- Pulce 10y ago
  Thanks, I'll write to you soon. edit: :)
  - Taylor_OD 10y ago
    I'm also curious if you are open to sharing.
    - Pulce 10y ago
      Yes :) I'll write it toworrow!
      - Pulce 10y ago
        It's here: pulce.neocities.org Have fun :)

agentgt 10y ago

I was expecting to see some Squeak links (OSS Smalltalk) but I guess no one at Disney is using it now? I think it was the Go.com group ala Alan Kay that was doing something with it internally (I'll need to do some googling but it appears the group moved to ycombinator according to wikipedia... my memory sucks).

qwertyuiop924 10y ago
If you must Squeak to a company, attribute it to Apple. That's where the project started. The team behind it then moved to Walt Disney Imagineering (Disney's R&D Arm). From then, the team's corporate sponsorship becomes a tangled mess, but according to Wikipedia, they've been with HP Labs, SAP Labs, and... Y-Combinator. Well, that's a name I didn't expect to see there.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

smegel 10y ago

They make light-hearted animations, but their software looks seriously hardcore.

alexkavon 10y ago

Can't wait for the Mickey Mouse repo in 2024.

gkoberger 10y ago
Why? Disney has invested countless dollars into Mickey Mouse over the past 89 years. It's not like the Happy Birthday song, being hoarded without innovation purely for profit; they're actively expanding/investing/improving and making billions of people happy. Why should random companies get to legally print knockoff Mickey t-shirts just because enough time has passed?
- BinaryIdiot 10y ago
  > Why should random companies get to legally print knockoff Mickey t-shirts just because enough time has passed? Because our Copyright laws are all sorts of outdated and ridiculous in various ways.
- s-phi-nl 10y ago
  Because that's what the US Constitution requires [1]: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries" (Emphasis added) [1] https://www.constituteproject.org/constitution/United_States_of_America_1992#35 https://www.constituteproject.org/constitution/United_States...
  - cyphar 10y ago
    Copyright is limited. It's just that the Mickey Mouse collective is constantly getting laws passed that push back how far away "limited" is. It's more like a pay-as-you-go scheme for unlimited copyright while skirting around the US constitution. And of course, because Disney has enough money they can also convince Congress to apply the law changes retroactively.
    - macintux 10y ago

yazaddaruvala 10y ago

Just an FYI: Always be careful! I opened up a couple of these repos and some seem to have modifications on their licenses. Some like OpenEXR say "BSD" but don't actually have a license file. Others like, Ptex and Partio, have no mention of a license at all. Edit: For anyone wondering why this is an issue. From a legal standpoint, there is a huge difference between being able to read the code, and being able to use the code.

napsterbr 10y ago
> why this is an issue The fact that this comes from Disney does not help, too.
- fsloth 10y ago
  Huge chunks of modern computer graphics production rendering infrastructure is based on open codebases. I don't get the snark. The visualization studios (Disney, Sony, etc) work on open source is a fantastic example how open sourcing codebases can be a win-win-win situation.
ncannon 10y ago
All those you mention do have licenses. OpenEXR - https://github.com/openexr/openexr/blob/develop/OpenEXR/LICENSE https://github.com/openexr/openexr/blob/develop/OpenEXR/LICE... Ptex - http://ptex.us/documentation.html http://ptex.us/documentation.html Partio - https://github.com/wdas/partio/blob/master/src/doc/license.txt https://github.com/wdas/partio/blob/master/src/doc/license.t...
- yazaddaruvala 10y ago
  Cool, I'm glad, but still always be careful. Meanwhile, I don't really have access to a lawyer and I'm curious: 1. Should I trust a license which is not distributed with the source code (i.e. on the hopefully official website)? 2. Should I trust a license which is in a sub-directory? My initial assumption is that, only that sub-directory is licensed.

curiouscat321 10y ago

I hope Disney does more of this! They're a tech company in a lot of ways. I believe they're using Rails for their site (which would make it amongst the biggest Rails sites in the world) and I hope they release some Rails stuff too!

JustinGarrison 10y ago
I hope so too. As an employee and an open source enthusiast. There are many people inside the (very large) company pushing for more of this. Many of them have replied in this thread. :)

lima 10y ago

OpenSubdiv is a game changer in FOSS 3d software. Blender is already using it: https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Ref/Release_Notes/2.76/OpenSubdiv https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Ref/Release_Notes/2.7... Demo: https://youtu.be/dzIl_S-qHIQ?t=115 https://youtu.be/dzIl_S-qHIQ?t=115

JustSomeNobody 10y ago
Like the entire game has changed, rules, board, pieces and everything? Or like the game has been somewhat improved?
- vidarh 10y ago
  Check out the video. In the example, rendering of an animated model goes from 0.25fps without it, to 4fps with it using CPU rendering, or up to 40fps using CUDA for the example model.... I'd say that is large enough to have the potential to fundamentally alter how people work.
  - FigmentEngine 10y ago
    "fundamental" seems to imply a magnitude shift. 100x seems the minimum bar IMHO. Otherwise its just decimate..
    - ChristianGeek 10y ago
      In this case the frame rate went from 0.25 fps to 40 fps, a 160x improvement, so "fundamental" it is.
      - vanderZwan 10y ago
        Also, diminishing returns apply: going from 0.25 fps to 40 fps is a game changer when doing interactive modelling, in the sense that only one of the two can be considered interactive. Going 40 fps to 4000 fps wouldn't really be make things much better (I'm sure artists would simply push the tools to bring that frame rate down again, and any improvement to render speed obviously would matter for final exports, but you get what I mean).

shredwheat 10y ago

This is a showcase of larger open source projects used in the visual effects and animation industry. Several of them are contributed to by Disney engineers, but most people would not consider these Disney projects. Disney has open sourced and released some impressive open source projects over the years, and it's exciting to see their endorsement on these others.

ykl 10y ago
Project: Originating and maintaining organization USD: Pixar OpenSubdiv: Pixar jss-api-gem: Pixar Munki: WDAS Reposado: WDAS SeExpr: WDAS Ptex: WDAS Partio: WDAS Dynamica: WDAS BRDF Explorer: WDAS OpenEXR: ILM Alembic: ILM and Sony Imageworks So which one of these is not a Disney project, considering they all originated from and are maintained by Disney engineers?
- berkut 10y ago
  Alembic was originally Sony's thing, which ILM started using in their early Katana days because their own file format wasn't good enough for use with Katana (random access and lazy loading). Sony gave it to ILM to start using, and then open-sourced it. I'd quibble that while ILM and Pixar employees are technically now Disney employees, it's not as if they work for Walt Disney Animation Studios directly, so it's not as clear cut as you make out.
  - ykl 10y ago
    Fair enough about Alembic. ILM and Pixar are very much Disney employees though, as in employees of the wider Walt Disney Company (which this page is for; the specific page for WDAS is here [1]). If you get a Silver Pass and your pay comes from TWDC's bank account, I'm pretty sure you are a Disney employee. WDAS, Pixar, and ILM are all just individual subsidiaries under the wider TWDC umbrella. [1] https://www.disneyanimation.com/technology/opensource https://www.disneyanimation.com/technology/opensource
n1gels 10y ago
I run Disney's open source program. This page is a showcase of all projects from Disney business units. It's currently slanted towards animation because these organizations have been the most prolific to date. We (Disney) expect to broaden the range of projects, to other types of open source projects, for example Dragonchain https://github.com/dragonchain/dragonchain https://github.com/dragonchain/dragonchain

santaclaus 10y ago

Super cool! I'd be curious to see what bits of software here are from WDAS vs ILM vs Pixar.

qwertyuiop924 10y ago
...Quite a few of them. IIRC, Alembic is from ILM, but I know it's not from Disney. But a lot of those are joint efforts from all over the industry.
a_e_k 10y ago
Pixar: USD, OpenSubdiv, jss-api-gem WDAS: Reposado, SeExpr, Ptex, Partio, Dynamica, BRDF Explorer ILM: OpenEXR, Alembic (with Sony)
- berkut 10y ago
  Alembic was actually mostly Sony originally - ILM were mostly just a name on the ticket, and ILM started using the format because it was much more Katana-friendly (random access and lazy-loading) than their current format, and they were starting to use Katana at the time. The first version of Alembic was pretty much just Sony's internal geometry format renamed.
  - bleair 10y ago
    I'm not sure what you're referring to as "first version". Did you work on Katana at Sony, and are you referring to the choice to use HDF5? The idea (a hierarchical organization of geom prims and transforms) was very similar between ILM and Sony. The library API organization (for better and worse) and hashing more more ILM but it was a pretty close collaboration all along the way.
    - berkut 10y ago
      Version 1.0. I was at The Foundry while this was happening. ILM struggled to use Katana with their existing file format. I'd be worried if the idea wasn't similar - it was the implementation that mattered, and ILM's older format wasn't very good at random access and lazy loading (which were things needed for efficient use in Katana). Alembic 1.0 was very close to Sony's Taco format rebranded.

baccredited 10y ago

Steps: 1. Fire all the old programmers 2. Make them train their cheap H-1B visa replacements 3. Open source some code 4. Have a magical day! http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/04/us/last-task-after-layoff-at-disney-train-foreign-replacements.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/04/us/last-task-after-layoff-...

bmuon 10y ago
Did the NYTimes actually do any research for that piece? H1Bs are required to have a higher salary than average precisely to avoid that from happening
- qaq 10y ago
  It's calculated of some predefined averages that are way lower than actual market rates. Most H1B's I know are making pretty much market rate or within 5-10% of market rate though. How do they find people to work for about half I have no clue.
- pzenger 10y ago
  I believe it is based on the average for the country, which is much lower than the average in certain areas, like California.... But I may be wrong.
  - lfittl 10y ago
    Pretty sure the labor certification and prevailing wage requirement is on a county / city basis (i.e. somewhat related to the actual local wages), see also https://www.dol.gov/whd/immigration/h1b.htm https://www.dol.gov/whd/immigration/h1b.htm
  - JustSomeNobody 10y ago
    Hope it isn't based on what the government pays developers. I've seen some java devs making upper 30s to low 40s within the past few years. That's just crazy.

dragonshed 10y ago

The DIY style management software for OS X/macOS[1][2] is interesting. I knew commercial packages existed for this sort of thing (and more), but I'm fascinated that Disney admins & engineers chose to implement their own Software Update Servers. [1]https://github.com/munki/munki https://github.com/munki/munki [2]https://github.com/wdas/reposado https://github.com/wdas/reposado

zalmoxes 10y ago
FYI, a large number of enterprise orgs and Edus use Munki and Reposado to manage Macs. Among these: Google(their fork is called Simian: https://github.com/google/simian https://github.com/google/simian) and Facebook. Not only is Munki used across a large number of organizations, it also happens to arguable be the best current software management tool for Macs. Another project maintained by the same group of MacAdmins is AutoPKG https://github.com/autopkg/autopkg https://github.com/autopkg/autopkg
brazzledazzle 10y ago
There's definitely much easier to use tools out there in terms of the UX, learning curve and some features that just aren't in scope for munki/reposado/autopkg but in many respects the commercial competition has been (and still is) playing catch up. Back when it was first introduced the divide was even greater.
chucky_z 10y ago
How tied to Disney is munki and reposado? I use the Server app, but the functionality is continually hamstrung and honestly these open-source apps probably have more functionality than was ever in Server. It's really interesting to hear that they could be tied so closely to Disney though.
- brazzledazzle 10y ago
  As far as how tied to Disney they are: the project lead and initial sole developer (others chip in quite a bit now) is an employee of Disney. My impression is that he's open to changing things but not if those changes interfere or complicate their deployment at Disney. So I'd say definitely Disney-prioritized rather than a straight up community project. Affiliated projects like AutoPkg are community driven and somewhat tool agnostic. I think what you should use depends on your available time, inclination and mindset. I meant for this to be short but it ended up being ridiculously long. Sorry about that. Hopefully it helps save you and anyone else the time required to get a broad understanding of this space. tl;dr at the bottom. I wouldn't bother with Server App. It's complete crap. Maybe useful for >10 macs but I'm honestly not sure if that's even true given all the ways it can totally shit the bed on you. Not well maintained. Probably best to think of it more as a reference implementation for 3rd parties developing an MDM solution. If you have time for the learning curve, want to apply the configuration as code/automated testing mindset and want/need to save money go with the open source tools. Don't expect to be able to commit the commercial versions to source control. Munki+Reposado+Margarita+AutoPkg for sure: Munki: Nothing touches it terms of the core/engine's package installation abilities. Repo is configured by the admin/tools like autopkg so it's just a static repo that can be hosted by any web server. Customizable self-service app that's very similar to the app store app. Reposado: Let's you do pipeline/canary testing/one-some-many deployments of your official Apple updates since they can rarely mess things up on their own but more frequently break some software. Margarita: Web UI for managing Reposado, only needed if you want/need that or just don't want to deal with figuring out how to manage/automate it. AutoPkg: This is so amazing you'll want this even if you use something like Casper but it was designed with Munki in mind. Using recipes it downloads updates for software from the vendor's websites/repositories, repackages as necessary and can be configured to automatically add those as updates for your existing packages. So you can get security updates and force their installation long before your average laptop user bothers to update. You can do pipeline/canary testing/one-some-many deployments using your preferred CICD tool (Jenkins seems to be popular for this). Recipes are maintained in a community repo so even if a vendor changes their site and breaks things someone has probably noticed before you and provided a fix. Key differentiators for these: Open Source, configuration management as code, automation, testing, CICD, etc. Puppet, Chef, Ansible, Salt or GitHub's Boxen (Uses Puppet but has an opinionated layer on top): If you want more configuration management and distributing it via packages through Munki isn't your cup of tea use one of these in addition to Munki. Key differentiators: Open Source, configuration management as code, automation, testing, CICD, etc. If you want easy as pie and very SMB oriented take a look at JAMF's Bushel. It's clean looking and subscription based and probably the least amount of effort overall. It's cloud-only I believe, so if on-prem is a requirement look at the next one. Not sure if you can do custom packages or much in the way of config but you can definitely distribute Apple App store applications. Key differentiators: modern, easy to use and quick to get started with. Auto-magic enrollment of devices you buy (as long as they are through the same account). Distributed App Store apps. If you want more control and a decent GUI (particularly if you have a decent number of Macs) take a look at JAMF's Casper. Warning: The trial is limited to 14 days but you can purchase a 45 or 60 day trial+2 or 3 days of training for a mere ~$4K or $6K. Training I think is provided by a VAR/Partner. No you can't use it after that unless you buy it. Expect a hard and high touch sales experience since this is more or less enterprise software. There's a cloud version and on-prem version. On-prem will require some upkeep (MySQL instance to manage, java app that runs on tomcat, etc.). You should use AutoPkg with Casper too even if it's a bit annoying to get setup. Key differentiators: Big community with a lot of answers and advice that are often universal enough to be useful no matter what you're using. Very enterprise-y so good if you need that (contract, support, feel good sales pitch to management). Easy to use for junior admins or support people. Easy self-service that customizable per-person/group. Auto-magic enrollment of devices you buy (as long as they are through the same account). Note: The JAMF sales people might bring in a rep from Apple's Enterprise Support team during the sales process to talk about the benefits of Casper (they use it at Apple) as well as (surprise) pitch their enterprise support services and a package called enterprise connect. Enterprise connect is essentially a workaround for bad UX/bugs in Apple's directory services support that they want you to pay for. When the Apple rep told us that you'd be silly to use open source tools we asked about Google and Facebook and he replied, "Yeah... well they probably think they're pretty smart! Haha." Backpedaling ensued and he said, "Well of course they're smart, they just have different problems." When pressed about the problems Casper couldn't resolve for them he said "scale" after conferring with another person at Apple. There are others but either I don't know enough about them to offer any insight or they aren't worth mentioning for various reasons. tl;dr: Munki/Reposado/AutoPkg: If you can afford the learning curve and need/want the DevOps tools/automation/philosophy. Bushel: If you want easy, no hassle and automatic device enrollment, SMB. Casper: If you want a GUI, enterprise features and automatic device enrollment, easy self-service, have a decent number of Macs.

zump 10y ago

How can I apply for a job at Disney? Someone send me an email that won't lead to a black hole!!

brianzelip 10y ago
from the linked webpage's header: > Interested in working with us on projects like this and more? Check out our current job opportunities at http://disneycareers.com http://disneycareers.com.
n1gels 10y ago
Technology jobs at Disney http://disneytechjobs.com http://disneytechjobs.com
- zump 10y ago
  Site is still terrible :/

jedberg 10y ago

I as really hoping all the projects would be named after Disney characters, because it would be fun to say, "I think we should run Mickey, but we may need to fork Donald to make it work in our environment".

phkahler 10y ago
I can think of many from Disney that I'd rather fork than Donald. ;-)
- jedberg 10y ago
  I dunno, I prefer to eat duck over dog or mouse. ;)
  - phkahler 10y ago
    jedberg, we deserve the down votes (-4 for me. a personal record!). These are the kind of comments that have come to dominate slashdot - a formerly awesome site. Sorry HN, I couldn't help it this time. Now back to the higher quality discourse.
    - jedberg 10y ago
      I agree with you (I only got -3, but that is also an HN personal record).
cooper12 10y ago
No thanks, Disney has already done enough to fuck over the public domain via copyright. We don't need them using trademarks to fuck over developers too. Besides, I doubt their lawyers would want them to dilute their trademarks like that.
- anchpop 10y ago
  Trademarks are only within a field. If Disney wanted to open-source something and trademark its name, they'd have to get a new trademark

sarreph 10y ago

After my microeconomics lectures, these are two words* I never thought I'd see together.[0] [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act *Yes, I am treating 'Open Source' as one word, you 'Disney Open' trolls.

6stringmerc 10y ago

Oh, so that's what the replacements that Disney outsourced and canned those US professionals will be using? Maybe not the most polite type of joke, but hey, I just saw that a judge recently smacked down the class action the terminated employees had submitted (using sound logic). Be wary of anything with Disney's fingerprints on it. They are - rightly or wrongly - seen as Public Enemy #1 to Copyright reform. Throwing some spare change into the pond of Open Source should be measured.

mrcactu5 10y ago

Pixar has a course through Khan academy. The algebra gets quite advanced! https://www.khanacademy.org/partner-content/pixar/animate https://www.khanacademy.org/partner-content/pixar/animate I don't mind if the images are too realistic -- just some good shading here and there

j0j0r0 10y ago

I work there, and am on the Disney Open Source Committee! We also just open sourced a hybrid public/private blockchain platform "Dragonchain" with some interesting features. https://github.com/dragonchain/dragonchain https://github.com/dragonchain/dragonchain Architecture document: https://dragonchain.github.io/doc/DragonchainArchitecture.pdf https://dragonchain.github.io/doc/DragonchainArchitecture.pd... Code is newly released, and rough around the edges. We're working to get the docs up to par and some Docker containers ready for ease of use. Feedback is welcome.

random567 10y ago
What do you actually use Dragonchain for within Disney? Why does Disney need a blockchain platform?
- clarkmoody 10y ago
  I'm also curious to know the use case and am reminded of the "Do you need a blockchain?" flowcharts [1][2] [1] https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cn2zMbTWYAAQA6i.png https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cn2zMbTWYAAQA6i.png [2] https://media.licdn.com/mpr/mpr/shrinknp_400_400/AAEAAQAAAAAAAAfeAAAAJDUwODM3OTQzLWVmYjktNGYzZS1hNDIwLTkzZGIwNThiNTNmMw.jpg https://media.licdn.com/mpr/mpr/shrinknp_400_400/AAEAAQAAAAA...
- lstamour 10y ago
  Just tossing out wild guesses/ideas: Theme parks maybe? Or tracking/trading movie ownership? Contracts? Points systems for games?
  - dllthomas 10y ago
    Most of those don't seem to benefit from block chain style decentralization (where you still need to talk to the network).
- Shinchy 10y ago
  Disney Dollars possibly.

gdamjan1 10y ago

is it coincidence that disney gets on hacker news at the same time as they are "The empire strikes back: Disney to sue school that teaches lightsaber skills" http://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/oct/17/star-wars-disney-lightsaber-school-lawsuit http://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/oct/17/star-wars-disney... ???

tajen 10y ago

We don't need Disney to open-source their software. We need Volkswagen and various bogus companies to open-source the software of safety-sensitive material. Dangerous hardware, measurement tools (e.g. petrol stations, security cams), voting machines, droids... Disney's open-source is merely dry bread for the plebs: We'll take it but it's not advancing our situation.