[ Thanks to Ed
Matthews for this link. Ed was careful to ask 'What about the
SSSCA?' when he submitted the item. What indeed? ]
As is the situation at many companies, Dreamworks' IT
budget is not an infinite resource. To that end, Leonard is making
a name for himself as an example of how Linux can be
cost-efficiently deployed in large-scale environments. 'My
background is software, so I've always been fascinated with
shareware, emerging software, and just creating interesting, cool
applications,' Leonard says. 'But I wasn't really involved in the
Linux movement.'
But after observing the rise of Linux while simultaneously
noting that technologies such as CPUs and graphics cards continued
to slide into commodity status, Leonard realized Linux could be
effectively applied to high-end apps.
"There's a tremendous appetite for being able to give the most
computing resources [available] to the artist who realizes their
vision is filmmaking. The more we give the filmmakers, the more
they want," Leonard explains. "We're just trying to stay ahead of
the demand so that ultimately we get great films."