An awful lot of FOSS should thank the Academy

One of the things we didn't expect to see at this year's Ubuntu get-together was a chart showing Rocky Linux's dominance. Another was demos of whizz-bang special movie effects with open source componentry at their heart. The Ubuntu Summit 2024 was in the Hague this year, and the Reg FOSS desk was invited along. One of the …

[Bebu]

Interested in which *EL8 version dominates.

I would punt that AL8 might reverse the share with Rocky 8.

I settled on AL8 moving my personal systems from RHEL8 (still used in a couple of VMs) after looking at Rocky, Alma etc and non *EL distros. I chose AL mostly because Cloudlinux was supporting/sponsoring AL which was more likely to be around in a few years. Second choice was opensuse.

In the event didn't really make a difference for me. I run Proxmox which has a debian (bookworm) based OS but could easily have used SmartOS (illumos based.) When AL8 is EOL, if I am still around, I would probably migrate to a variety of OS and distros but as VMs. The only downside is keeping everything patched. Currently just mirror AL8, ZFS, EPEL8 etc updates and patch from my mirror.

It would be interesting to know why this user community chose Rocky but possibly the applications they use were only supported on Rocky.

[Andy The Hat]

bit hypocritical?

Given Hollywood's (et al) well documented, strict copyright enforcement policies and multi-billion dollar turnovers, it seems strange than FOSS organisations should actually choose to get into bed with it ...

[Liam Proven]

Re: bit hypocritical?

> it seems strange than FOSS organisations should actually choose to get into bed with it

A good point, well made.

[Jeff3171351982]

Re: bit hypocritical?

Yeah. I see "Sony", and the first thing that comes to mind is DRM. Maybe management just can't control everything. E.g., I'm still amazed that Logitech management allowed the open sourcing of the Logitech Media Server (now Lyrion Media Server). This is a super informative article, btw.

[Liam Proven]

Re: bit hypocritical?

> This is a super informative article, btw.

Oh, good! Thanks!

[Adair]

Re: bit hypocritical?

When it comes to copyright I guess there is a distinction between 'tools' and 'content' produced by those tools.

[SenileOtaku]

Re: bit hypocritical?

Did you mean "tools" as in the software being used, or "tools" as in the persons using the software?

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: bit hypocritical?

It's probably like everything else - the suits don't want to dirty their hands finding out what the techies are up to.

[keithpeter]

Re: bit hypocritical?

"[snip...the suits don't want to dirty their hands finding out what the techies are up to"

Or perhaps the suits, back in the 90s, had realised the need to move away from film, i.e. actual strips of acetate film clunking through mechanical cameras and being processed with complex chemicals and a huge amount of water. The techies perhaps pointed out that this free software stuff could speed up the transition?

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: bit hypocritical?

You would think so but - and you might find this unbelievable - but every studio, post-production house, camera maker and everyone with a capture card a compiler and a dream of being rich, all created their own expensive proprietary solution.

And everyone who knew that proprietary system got paid very well because you couldn't hire anyone who knew the system because only you had the system they needed experience on.

Then a bunch of people sold a lot of very expensive proprietary solutions to interconnect between them.

[Roland6]

Re: bit hypocritical?

This about tools to support content production, not finished product distribution.

It was the 1982 film Blade Runner that is reputedly the last big budget film that used in camera special effects rather than digital processing.

[johnandmegh]

Re: bit hypocritical?

Or, it could be viewed as working with someone with whom you disagree, instead of completely cutting yourself off from them. Catch more flies with honey, etc.

[doublelayer]

Re: bit hypocritical?

I have two points of disagreement with this. First, why should we care? As long as they use an actual open source license, no matter what they want, we have the freedoms of that license. Even if we eventually need to fork, we have the ability to continue to use the open source tools. We do, and their competitors do, which means it's less likely that they'll try to mess with it. If they come up with something that is so great they don't want competitors to have it, then they probably won't release that part as open source, but all the stuff they once did is still available to the community. We don't need to like them to benefit from the code they wrote.

Second, your reasoning doesn't make sense to me. Because they make money from copyright, we shouldn't agree with them? When did open source become antithetical to copyright, the primary reason why you can have and enforce an open source license? This seems to be part of the idea, in my opinion misguided, that the enemy of open source should be proprietary and that, to support open source, you should wish for the death of all copyright. I support open source, contribute time and money to open source projects, run a lot of open source software, and have no problem with someone choosing to sell the fruits of their labor rather than give it away. I see no problem with both approaches being used, each where it makes most sense.

[hayzoos]

Re: bit hypocritical?

Exactly!

The perception problem about copyright is largely skewed by the big players in movie, TV, music, picture, and print publishing industries. (not an all-inclusive list) Those entities have pushed the narrative that violation of copyright is stealing of revenue and is akin to taking food from the mouths of babes and even calling the act piracy. Therefore punishment should be steep fines and/or jailtime.

This leads to thinking copyright=proprietary=profits and the opposite of copyright is "public domain"=free. The second part of that is correct "public domain" is free (both gratis and libre) and the opposite of copyright. But copyright is not equal to proprietary or profits. Proprietary/profits just happens to be the most visible use case of copyright.

So many equate "open source" (in any of its' various forms) with "not profit" therefore free (mainly thinking gratis), therefore opposite of copyright, and therefore public domain. All of which it is not by default.

Copyright is a right granted to a creator (i.e author) of qualifying content (i.e. book) to have control of copies of their creation with some limitations such as "fair use". They can demand payment, donations to charity, being kind to strangers, most anything legal for specific uses of copies of their creation. Copyright has value and not just monetary, it has legal force.

The various "open source" licenses would be legally useless without the legal force of Copyright. The creation of Copyright creates the opposition "public domain". Since "open source" relies on copyright it cannot be "public domain".

"Open source" can be free (either gratis or libre or both) or not. Some argue that "source available" software you have to pay for and cannot give away is a form of "open source" and by pure English definition of "open" and "source" they may be right.

Hypocritical? in the sense of using "open source" software to create content under the proprietary/profit copyright use case, ah, okay. As pointed out these users of "open source" just may not have the copyright mindset (profits!) to follow the particular "open source" license restrictions. So demanding stiff penalties for violation of their copyright, but poo-pooing and attempt to enforce a hypothetical violation of an "open source" copyright because it is free (gratis).

[klh]

Re: bit hypocritical?

> and by pure English definition of "open" and "source" they may be right.

By pure English definition "blender" is a person or a thing that blends, hence people expecting the software to make smoothies may be right?

[Dave559]

Re: bit hypocritical?

"Given Hollywood's (et al) well documented, strict copyright enforcement policies and multi-billion dollar turnovers, it seems strange than FOSS organisations should actually choose to get into bed with it ..."

I'm actually more surprised from the other perspective: as special effects gradually become more computer-based, I can well see the, uhh, money conscious movie industry seeing (as they indeed did) Linux render farms as being much better value for them than whatever Microsith might have wanted to charge them for something vaguely similar, were it even possible.

What I'm much, much, more surprised at is that they have then released a number of their tools as open source (where, shock, horror, their rival movie studios and SFX labs could also use them), rather than each jealously keeping them in-house. A very welcome, but often too-rare, example of co-operation which then benefits an industry as a whole.

[RAMChYLD]

Re: bit hypocritical?

Also, given that they're speculated to be the very reason AMD GPUs can't get HDMI 2.2 on Linux...

[tdobson]

Thank you Liam

Just got an account on El Reg after being a regular reader since... 2005? ffs.

Anyway - to the point - I found this a lot more engaging and interesting than I expected from the line "I went to a conference and..."

There were twists, there were sidequests, there was bonus value.

Top article. Please continue putting yourself in positions where articles like this sneak up on you :)

[Liam Proven]

Re: Thank you Liam

> There were twists, there were sidequests, there was bonus value.

> Top article.

Oh, excellent -- that is great to hear. Thank you!

[Paul Smith]

Oh crap, you've got a NAN

Stunning!

[SenileOtaku]

And just why should we be thanking "the Academy" for the shit that passes as movies from the Academy members? Doesn't matter if the films are made with OpenSource or Proprietary software, it's still shit.

(proud member of the Fandom Menace)

[SCP]

Perhaps by making these tools open-source they make it practical for independents to get into the game and produce non-shit movies.

Of course, good movies need more than special-effects and swish production tools - but having these available would help produce a more polished product and to learn skills that would help make them commercially successful.

In my [very limited] experience amateur film makers can be very interested in the technical aspects of their 'hobby' and there are probably going to be many who enjoy working with these tools.