Disney is not just a consumer of open source, but a contributor as well. I say good for them!
If I told you that Disney was a big supporter of open source I doubt you would argue. I am sure they use a ton of Linux and LAMP stack components over there. I am sure there are lots of other open source tools in use over at “the House of Mouse” too. But Disney’s support of open source goes beyond being an open source consumer. They are contributing code and projects to the open source community. To give this some perspective, it is estimated that something like 93% of open source users never look at the source code of an open source application. Of the remaining 7% only about 2% to 3% actually write and contribute code.
Disney’s Animation Studio has just released its Ptex animation library as open source code. What is Ptex you ask? Ptex is a texture mapping method that was used extensively in the Disney movie Bolt. It is now the de facto standard for all of the texture mapping at Disney Animation Studios and is included with Pixar’s (also owned by Disney) Render Man Pro Server.
Disney developer Brent Burley in his announcement about Ptex being released as open source also indicated that Disney would be releasing more code and libraries as open source in the near future. They are setting up a Disney Technology page on the Disney Animation web site shortly. Good move Disney!
I think Disney has gone one better even. They have released Ptex under a BSD license. The BSD license is a great open source license. It gives a user virtually carte blanche to use the code in any matter they wish, including integrating it into other products, applications and projects. They just have to retain the Disney copyright notice. That really is very savvy and generous of Disney. They could have used the GPL or some other community license that could have made integrating and packaging Ptex with other tools very complicated.
Using the BSD license to release Ptex shows that Disney really is just giving back with Ptex. With the BSD license it would be difficult if not impossible at some point in the future to create some dual license scenario that would see them retain control for profit or otherwise. As a company Disney has gotten its share of black eyes for being very heavy handed regarding use of its IP. Putting Ptex out as open source with a BSD license is a good corporate citizen move and Disney deserves the good will it generates by this move.
