4 ms·

It is still 1998 in that sense. Direct3D, DirectML & DirectCompute are all built as moats for Microsoft. Just like the Apple Metal API is.

pierrebai 6y ago
How dare they design API to suit their need? That a company wants its own API to move freely and faster is often described as evil when it is merely sensible for them. It used to cause lock-in, but nowadays there are enough tech stack that isolate you from the underlying API to make it irrelevant. Do note that until, oh let's arbitrarily say 10 years ago, DirectX was ahead feature-wise to OpenGL and OpenGL was moving at turtle pace.
- robert_foss 6y ago
  They can do whatever they want, of course. But don't kid yourself about the reasons. If features are what they need, Khronos accepts any company as a member.
  - coldtea 6y ago
    >They can do whatever they want, of course. But don't kid yourself about the reasons. Isn't the people kidding themselves that ones that consider it a "strange" or "troubling" reason that a company has a product and wants to sell that product?
coldtea 6y ago
A platform has APIs. Who said an OS should use "open" graphics APIs? The whole point of having an OS is that it's different than another OS. If all OSes just used the same APIs (filesystems, graphics, sound, etc) we'd just have one OS. That's something shared by unices and Linux follows course, but it's not the idea behind (or the ideal of) other OSes. And I don't want a world where there's a single set of APIs for all OSes, and all OSes give the same core functionality in the same implementation (e.g. Vulcan + OpenAL + POSIX + ...). Having all OSes be that (e.g. all use Vulcan), would be the same situation as everybody using DirectX (innovation wise), the only exception being that Vulcan is free/open. But I don't want openess about all, I also want variety and different innovations, and platforms offering unique stuff...
- robert_foss 6y ago
  It is in your users interest to have access to APIs that are as useful as possible. The moat APIs created by OS vendors are mostly in their interest. Does anyone but Apple want an API like Metal? Developers don't. User see no benefit. Only Apple benefits. I'm not saying there should be only one globally used API for every task, but praising APIs that exist only to be moats to increase corporate profits is another. About innovation, everyone can join Khronos (for free) and contribute to their API of choice. You can add whichever extension you want to these APIs, and if they are found useful they are included in the main standard.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    Which is why Khronos APIs are a clusterf..... of extensions, only those that never actually wrote portable OpenXX code across multiple platforms, graphics cards and had to deal with driver bugs on top praise their portability. Write once, add code paths and debug everywhere.

pierrebai 6y ago

How dare they design API to suit their need? That a company wants its own API to move freely and faster is often described as evil when it is merely sensible for them. It used to cause lock-in, but nowadays there are enough tech stack that isolate you from the underlying API to make it irrelevant. Do note that until, oh let's arbitrarily say 10 years ago, DirectX was ahead feature-wise to OpenGL and OpenGL was moving at turtle pace.

robert_foss 6y ago
They can do whatever they want, of course. But don't kid yourself about the reasons. If features are what they need, Khronos accepts any company as a member.
- coldtea 6y ago
  >They can do whatever they want, of course. But don't kid yourself about the reasons. Isn't the people kidding themselves that ones that consider it a "strange" or "troubling" reason that a company has a product and wants to sell that product?

coldtea 6y ago

A platform has APIs. Who said an OS should use "open" graphics APIs? The whole point of having an OS is that it's different than another OS. If all OSes just used the same APIs (filesystems, graphics, sound, etc) we'd just have one OS. That's something shared by unices and Linux follows course, but it's not the idea behind (or the ideal of) other OSes. And I don't want a world where there's a single set of APIs for all OSes, and all OSes give the same core functionality in the same implementation (e.g. Vulcan + OpenAL + POSIX + ...). Having all OSes be that (e.g. all use Vulcan), would be the same situation as everybody using DirectX (innovation wise), the only exception being that Vulcan is free/open. But I don't want openess about all, I also want variety and different innovations, and platforms offering unique stuff...

robert_foss 6y ago
It is in your users interest to have access to APIs that are as useful as possible. The moat APIs created by OS vendors are mostly in their interest. Does anyone but Apple want an API like Metal? Developers don't. User see no benefit. Only Apple benefits. I'm not saying there should be only one globally used API for every task, but praising APIs that exist only to be moats to increase corporate profits is another. About innovation, everyone can join Khronos (for free) and contribute to their API of choice. You can add whichever extension you want to these APIs, and if they are found useful they are included in the main standard.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  Which is why Khronos APIs are a clusterf..... of extensions, only those that never actually wrote portable OpenXX code across multiple platforms, graphics cards and had to deal with driver bugs on top praise their portability. Write once, add code paths and debug everywhere.