It was the early 2010s. I was working on editorial workflows and was completely mesmerized by a piece of software a lead developer had put together.

It was a multimedia library written in pure Python and C++. It could read metadata from common media files and place them as clips on a virtual timeline. Essentially, it was a non-linear video editing tool, but purely in python.

On top of that, he had built a bridging system that could import and export to commercial software. We were bridging Adobe Premiere and Final Cut Pro straight to the TrueLight projection room. It was intelligent, elegant, and I was floored.

Spoiler Alert: I wasn’t working at Pixar, and this tool wasn’t OpenTimelineIO (OTIO).

I was at the late Technicolor in London. At the time, open-source wasn’t exactly a priority. The company probably followed the old corporate mindset: “Why would we give the results of years of our hard work to the competition for free?”

Pixar wouldn’t unveil OpenTimelineIO to the public until 2016. The tool I saw had at least a five-year head start on what would eventually become the industry standard.

Today, OTIO is everywhere. Yet, it still lacks some of the hyper-powerful features I saw running with my own eyes over 15 years ago. Meanwhile, Technicolor went bankrupt. That brilliant piece of code is likely gone forever.

So what’s the moral of the story?

“Done and shared” eventually beats “Perfect and hidden”.

To be clear, I’m not saying you should give away the core “secret sauce” that directly drives your company’s revenue. Keep your unique intellectual property closed.

But infrastructure? Pipeline tools? The foundational plumbing that every single studio is busy reinventing in their own isolated corners? Sharing that doesn’t feed your competitors—it just stops everyone from wasting time solving the exact same problems.

This is especially true today. With generative AI, the temptation to have your own perfect little tool in your corner has never been stronger. It’s fast, it’s easy. But let’s not forget: an isolated tool eventually dies with the team/project. A shared tool might become a standard.