Open Source Days 2026

One of the primary challenges with OpenUSD proposals is aligning on the problem statement that cross-domain communities agree on. OpenUSD’s reach extends beyond film and animation, into gaming, robotics, simulation, and geospatial analytics. That growth strains the proposal process - the community is increasingly diverse with unique, domain specific requirements and procedures. Groups new to USD, with their own vocabulary and experience must agree not just on solutions, but first a common understanding must be built on what problem is being solved.

This session covers the methodology used across many proposals to meet this challenge. A clear, agreed-upon problem statement, not a solution, is the first gate– and the real work there is disentangling terminology collisions, and stepping back from USD itself to state a concern in neutral terms.

We’ll show how this serves both cross-cutting concerns (Source Identifiers, Authorship, IP Protection, and Profiles) and domain-specific features like LOD, Image Planes, BReps, and Geospatial, with Profiles the key mechanism for bucketing discussions, audiences, and priorities.

From this presentation, attendees leave knowing how to read a proposal, write a problem statement the community can reason about, and engage through proposal PRs, prototypes, and AOUSD.