The Academy Software Foundation, a collaborative effort to advance open source software development in the motion picture and media industries, today announced that Apple and Microsoft have joined the Foundation as Premier members.

“Filmmakers everywhere use Apple products. We are delighted to welcome Apple as a new member, and we look forward to working with them to ensure that our open source projects run well on Apple software platforms,” said David Morin, Executive Director of the Academy Software Foundation. “We are also pleased to welcome Microsoft to the Academy Software Foundation. Their membership helps us hit a significant milestone as we surpass $1M in annual funding, a solid financial base that we will use to support our open source projects, the software engineers that develop them, and the open-source community in general.”

Studios and vendors across the industry have come together to support of the Academy Software Foundation, launched in August 2018 by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Linux Foundation.  The Academy Software Foundation provides a neutral forum for open source software developers to share resources and collaborate on technologies for image creation, visual effects, animation, and sound.

“To support the continued growth of open source software across our industry, we have the privilege of providing developers with tools that make it easier to contribute code and participate in the community,” said Rob Bredow, Executive Creative Director and Head of Industrial Light & Magic, and Governing Board Chair of Academy Software Foundation. “One of these tools is the Academy Software Foundation’s Continuous Integration (CI) build infrastructure, which streamlines development for build and runtime environments. With Apple as a new member, we hope to work with them to improve support for Apple platforms, which will continue to democratize open source software development.”

As a new Foundation member, Microsoft is committing to dedicating engineering resources to support Foundation-hosted projects and will assume roles on the Academy Software Foundation Governing Board and on its Technical Advisory Council (TAC).

“At Microsoft, our mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more, and it’s this mission that drives our commitment to open source,” said Tad Brockway, corporate vice president, Azure Storage, Media and Edge, Microsoft Corp. “We’re excited to become a member of the Academy Software Foundation and work together with the industry’s open source community to bring the latest cloud technologies to the Foundation and its projects.”