IDG Contributor Network: Why Pixar open sourced its 3D graphics technology

Pixar Animation Studios has open sourced its Universal Scene Description (USD) technology. USD is an extremely powerful toolset that helps filmmakers in reading, writing, editing, and rapidly previewing 3D scene data.
“USD is the core of Pixar's 3D graphics pipeline, used in every 3D authoring and rendering application, including Pixar's proprietary Presto animation system,” according to Pixar. 
USD is aimed at performance and large-scale collaboration among many artists that m