So what is USD and what we can except if it will be used by VFX/CG studios all over the world. My opinion is that there is shift in the industry which leads to the generalization of pipelines and open-source technologies have key role in it.
Commonplace is that: every pipeline is different. It might be true but the end of the day studios, managers, supervisors, artists are facing the same or very similar issues day by day. There is the need to be more efficient and the CG/VFX pipeline is more and more in focus. But there are no off-the-shelf products so every studio has to develop in-house technologies and tools to manage their work. Usually the main driving forces of the development are the projects which are generates a lot of practices (how to name things for eg.). Ideally these practises are evaluated after and before the projects and could be implemented into the pipeline. So the pipeline evolves but this evolutions is rather some thing like agile software development which is works fine for a short term. In long term the pipeline development is based on the legacy of previous works and that is why every pipeline can be different.
But we can get to the point where the pipeline won't let us to be more efficient because of the legacy. For example it won't let us (or it would be too expensive) to implement new technologies, solve bottlenecks. And that is the time when the pipeline should be re-evaluated as a whole. The process is the generalization of the problems we face day by day. On a long term (might be decades) it has to result that studio pipelines are getting more and more similar. Of course there are new technologies, hardwares and the softwares which can distract the generalization process. That is why I think open-source technologies have key role in that, because the CG/VFX community can work together on the so called "best practise".
Universal Scene Description is a promise to generalize the way we build up 3D scenes and share between different (most likely 3D) softwares like Maya, Houdini, Katana, etc. They are on their way: as the FAQ says linux version can be downloaded and windows implementation is coming soon. Extended documentation and tutorials are also there.
