 Hi, this is your host of the Bhartiya and today we have with us Roy Lou Bryant. Thank you. Thank you for having me I'm glad to be here. First of all, thanks for joining me today You hear a lot of hats at the Linux foundation before I specifically talk about the open metaverse foundation I would like to hear what are the things that you do because there are a lot of Correlation and also when we talk about Linux foundation a lot of projects that they leverage each other a lot of cross-politician happens So let's talk about you first. I'm the general manager of digital media and games over the Linux foundation I also serve as the executive director for the open 3d foundation, which has a direct synergy Believe it or not when it comes to games metaverse they are VR because in most of these environments We're talking about 3d and how it's actually used and the impacts of how open source You know can change really the landscape of what we're doing And I think that's one of the big parts that people have to understand There are a lot of great engines out there But we've seen open source time and time again be able to make profound impact and profound changes to markets and Industries. Let's now talk about open metaverse foundation. First of all, if I ask you how would you define metaverse? How do I define metaverse so and it's great because yes everybody that same question. So my my Metaverse is one that is very similar to the internet where you have a network of connected worlds Virtual experiences that are not running the same software or not necessarily running the same software and These experiences allow you to flow from world to world in a matter that is very seamless and akin to how we actually surf the internet today Immersion is key But understand that it has to be an open and level playing field in what I call the metaverse to where Businesses and incumbents both have the ability to grow and provide experiences to anyone Then we look at metaverse specifically or metaverse foundation What kind of market or ecosystem you are being there will be there which will be mature and You know kind of in a stage where it will actually be having some impact on the real world so if you think about it the the ecosystem self is The environment where you have content creators because the reality is the richness of the metaverse is going to be key and content and you know key if this is content and so The reality is that when you build a lot of these experiences it is going to be that richness That's going to create that kind of ecosystem that can pull other people Into the fray so you know is it going to be this environment where we're going to see these lush environments and worlds just pop up out of Nowhere you'll see some of them But it's going to be an iterative process and you're going to see AI play of key in that you're going to see different creators You're going to see everything from fashion industries open up Automotive if you think take a look at a first glimpse of what happened was when we all got locked up During COVID people started to have to experience the things that they had to do in real life through their computers because there wasn't a lot of other choice And so we've actually seen a small glimpse of what it could be and what kind of impacts are going to be in these markets And so the ecosystem really is going to be content driven Of what's available which by the way is what we saw happen on the internet when that far started growing as well You talked about you know content and content when we look at these kind of you know Ecosystem is also compatibility or that's very no open source or Linux Foundation play a very big role because Unless until there is Compatibility content creators, you know, they don't want to target just one platform They want their content to be available across platform. So when we look at the foundation Talk a bit about your role and as we're talking about the scope, you know Which can not be just about collaboration on the code It could also be building a you know kind of ecosystem of content for content creators as well That's the biggest part of this the whole the number one cornerstone of what we're doing in the foundation is Interoperability because without interoperability now you're talking about basically having a world of AOL portals You know where you have experiences that are limited by the application or the hardware And so these are things where using open source really comes into play So having common standards being able to use things like GLTF and USD So that we can get the same 3d object that can move from one place to another Seamlessly whether it's on your phone or on your VR headset or on your PC That interoperability, but then also being able to describe these objects So if I turn around and buy a pair of Nike shoes that are $20 in their digital and they look a certain way Well, I want to make sure that when I buy the $40 pair that makes a spark that when I jump Looks the same way when I go to these different environments But to do that I have to provide the metadata of interoperability that says here are my capabilities on this server Here is my capabilities of this client and here are the capabilities of the content So that interoperability of metadata to be able to make decisions and define is the key element And so when you look when I look at my role It is making sure that these stay neutral that these stay from a perspective that anyone who builds content will make sure that It's reusable and also portable to all these different platforms and until you get there It's really hard to say that you have a metaverse You just have a lot of VR experiences that are proprietary to the device or the platform if you look at the foundation itself We talked about How would you define metaverse? Let's try to define how would you define this foundation? What is your scope? What is your goal? The goal of the foundation is to basically build Interoperable libraries that are completely open source and be able to take these libraries as they're being built to a certain degree Once they reach a point of maturity Taking these and being able to get the contributors to then basically sign an IP agreement That says that any of the patents or the background or the work they're doing is being contributed to the open For the purposes of building a standard and then being able to take that closed group and actually have a standard That's being built while the software and the libraries being built so that at the end destination where they are a graduated project We have a standard we have code We have documentation that somebody can implement and actually go forward as well as a testing environment And we take those standards and we'll either it will work with different standards groups to actually get them published But you know as well as I do that You know code is king and that if a developer has in a library that works interoperably and can get done what they need to That's something that you'll see get utilized much faster than a theoretical Publication that has no reference code. What class do you have for this year? What are the either problem areas that you're looking at addressing or What are the things that we should be looking forward to in 2023 when it comes to the metaverse foundation? The big things for metaverse foundation is for one Identifying all the features that are made up of it. So we actually built we published our phase one document Which is a 30,000 foot view that contains The outline of what a picture of the metaverse would look like when you read this what it would look like in your head It is not very technical. It's not designed to be very technical But it does explain all the facets and so by taking that document We've now dissected it and it's produced about 48 sentences and Each one of those sentences are being fed into the foundational interest groups so if I tell you that the metaverse is and is a virtual environment with Objects sounds that are Interactable and I tell that to somebody who is in say digital assets They're going to be thinking 3d objects fbx gltf textures all those things if I have that same Conversation with somebody who's actually into networking They're going to think back-end servers entity replication object coordinate systems And so we have eight different foundational areas that gives us eight different perspectives And that's why the metaverse has been such a difficult thing to chase because The problem is I tell the sentence to one person I get so many different answers And so the thing to expect from this is to see a very large number of features from each one of it is to see a large number of those features from each one of these and For people to be able to start iterating on that and start building these and at least My goal of what I've told people is that if we can just get an interoperable piece of software Library that allows Something simple like having two cubes and a ball bounce between them on two different servers that were not built in the same software Design completely different, but to have you know that kind of interoperability We are a thousand times further ahead than where we were a year ago in the first year What are the things that you're going to focus on big thing on the first year is to come up with a minimal set that we can iterate on Building something that is not we are not trying to build the metaverse. Okay We're trying to build all the components that can allow for others to be interoperable and to build the metaverse I'm more interested in building that HTML Building that back-end server because that is where the power of open source comes into play because everybody will write what they Want it some it'll write it and get some will write and rust some will write and go It'll be their flavor and we'll start to see these different You know projects come up from open source that have traditionally done monstrous things like what we've seen in Kubernetes where you've seen you know come out whether it comes out of a company or a different project so That's really where the focus is to make sure that we've got those small pieces interoperate I mean I can tell you we're having a conversation Yesterday and it was like hey wouldn't it be cool if we wrote a plug-in for Minecraft And we use the generic metadata so that if I present a sword in another game And I present it to Minecraft that they both appear Even though they're the same seamless object in two different environments Do you realize how much that opens up a content creators world because if they build a jacket? They literally could support other games and create new revenue streams and create new opportunities from them Just from that interoperable code existing talk a bit about the Organizational structure of the foundation because once again Linux foundation provides up you know some You know Founding you know some some blocks there building blocks there but different foundation They can pick and choose how they want to operate so talk a bit about the structure of this foundation So the structure of the foundation we had set up is there's a governing board and a technical oversight committee and so they're responsible at the top side to For different tasks the technical oversight committee takes a look at projects that are looking to come in Make a determination that is the IP clean is the project clean does it make sense that it should be part of the foundation? Will it come into the foundation or will we support it from afar? So a lot of times you'll find out that that within a foundation they want to bring everything in we actually have the approach where if it's a small community and they want to You know get the support of having kind of a formalized structure and to have somebody help them build their community We'll bring them in as long as it's aligned with what we're trying to do but if it's a larger community and they don't want to do that we set up a liaison with them and So we actually then can fork the code and start providing upstream commits to help assist and work with their project And grow their community at the same time. So the foundation has that model and we bring them in from the technical oversight We get projects that are built those projects are independent units that run in the foundation Some of them are funded Some of them get different resources that are applied depending on the maturity and the growth of the project But they run themselves with their own technical steering committee They're in special interest groups and their own code base The difference is that within this foundation we have the foundational interest groups And that's why they're called foundational interest groups is because they actually advise these projects and say hey look we've looked at this from a user's perspective and so What we need is these features to look like this and it looks like your project could fulfill that and they'll advise them They won't write the code, but they'll it's hard to write code in a bubble And so the result is that they get this kind of Model where they get expertise And advisement to them that helps fulfill them So that kind of gives you an idea of the structure behind that and then there are working groups that get formed as we move towards standards and The working groups then stay kind of in this environment where their intellectual property Protected so that we can actually have standards that are not going to have Intellectual property holds and those are also voted and governed on by the technical oversight committee. So some companies contribute engineering fiscal resources Things like that and that helps us do more marketing Outreach and also produce also have services for back-ends or like testing and it helps fuel everything and move it forward Can you also talk about what kind of industry participation is there your members or you know, that is Something is still in progress. So, I mean, we're very young right now So we've only had a few but you know, some of our our partners we have that have been fantastic You know between companies like we've got blockchain company. We've got I think one blockchain company We've got you know, some of the foundations within the LF that are actually working with us We have others like future way that have been big partners 3d metaverse experience type partners and so, you know, these are the beginning partners that we've started with and It's been very interesting to have their support because they've been able to dive in and get things back out of this So, you know, that's what now who are we talking to? You name it amongst all of those we have almost every major company has written in With a contact to reach out and discuss more Literally you name it all of them have been involved or are being involved and because they see what's happening So that kind of gives you an idea which you know And I think there's one thing that's probably good for us to talk about which is the whole the whole blockchain Element because it scares a lot of people So that might be interesting to talk about one of the other focus points that we have in the metaverse foundation is to make Sure, we know where our demarcation point is, you know Where things start and where things end and so we have a lot of questions about you know Blockchain and some of the things that's happened in that community some are highly opposed some are highly for it The interesting thing is that when you're building an open metaverse and you're building a lot of these elements here that have to with Open standards and open source libraries you have to draw a line at some point And so our one of our biggest points here is that you know, we're not trying to say the metaverse will be built on blockchain But what we are saying is that there is an ingress and egress of data that will go into say crypto currencies and things Like that so our line stops right at that ingress and egress and it doesn't go into actual crypto currencies that is whether you use PayPal or Visa or a blockchain that is something that's handled outside of it And it's something that is very fluid and you don't want to basically prevent Somebody from being able to choose what model that they want to you know Basically have a payment for But at the same time you have to make sure that you're looking so that you can use the technologies That are involved, you know Merkel trees being the basis of a lot of these blockchain elements and you want to take advantage of those in Decentralization for the logistics of it and there are a lot of use cases where those are applied So, you know, it's it's good to clarify that that you know, this isn't where it's all blockchain and everything's done that way Because it's just not the case. It's applied well in some places, but not in others and so logistically if I have a You know an experience and I have a thousand objects But only 20 of them will be portable where they go outside of my experience. I have no need to decentralize all thousand things I don't need it all to be decentralized I need to have some of them centralized and maybe part of them decentralized and on an interoperability and whether it's DLTs or DAGs or blockchains. That's something that we work on as a community, but when it comes to currencies That's something that we kind of stay away from and we set the ingress and egress so that the actual vendors can make that choice Of course, there are a lot of folks. You are in touch with a lot of folks who are already interested in but what are Who are the right folks who should get involved with this foundation and what is the right path for them to get involved? So for people to get involved really the best place to start is to jump in the discord server It's discord.gg open metaverse And also to go to the website and take a look at some of the videos that are in each one of the vertical areas Figure out what you like the most. What pertains to you get into the conversation Argue lots and lots of arguing because it's the only way we're really going to get where we need to be and so For individuals or even other open-source projects Reach out get involved because we are looking to embrace Different communities and help augment them. So if we have people who are working in let's just say AI That are part of open metaverse and they're wanting to work on a solution the AI communities that were connected with We're going to send people over to those communities because the thing is we don't need them working on the Specifics of the AI and how it operates only in the context of how it applies to metaverse So it's better for us to actually send them over to the communities help build those communities and try and trap them inside of it It's just too broad And it's just too difficult to wield so that's the reason why we are looking and why we're working with communities to Actually send people over to them and cross pollinate now for companies It's really about you know having your hand on the steering wheel and being able to have a certain amount of influence Being involved in the company joining the foundation is giving being involved the foundation and joining it means that you know You're able to help where we steer some of the marketing and where we put some of the resources To also look at how your engineers can get involved also making sure that as we're forming these standards The different parts of your products are already compatible That they're already there and that the elements that you would need that operate your services are being accounted for when we talk About the metadata and the services and the scaling So those are some of the places where it's really important But at the end of the day it is all done by community of how it's brought together So if you're not a part of the conversation progress will just simply keep moving forward It's not it's not a factor of you know people will be leaving you behind but Inaction is just as much of a decision as taking an action Well, thank you so much for taking time out today And I would love to have you back on the show to get more updates about the foundation But I really really really appreciate your time there. I wish we could have done this in the metaverse But it's real birdies as good as metaverse. So thank you Ah, give it time. We'll get there and thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate and I look forward to Following up, you know, it's it's an exciting time and uh, you know, we're we're moving really breakneck speeds and It's an exciting and tiresome day