🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <VCR6HJR@mailgzrz.tu-berlin.de>, woks4000@mailszrz.zrz.tu-berlin.de (Wolfgang Ksoll) writes:
|> There have been many perturbations
|> when other vendors licensed only a subset of GL and customers noticed
|> that SGI-developers had hardcoded their applications to fontmanager and window-
|> manager which were not part of the agreement. This was not open.
|> 
|> If you state that your next GL is an OpenGL you should give technicians
|> the possibility to take a look to the standard (not the product) as soon as
|> possible. Otherwise I have no reasons to treat it as other marketing
|> announcements like OSF/1, Windows-NT, ACE and other coming soon products.
|> 
|> My personal opinion: you will earn more money and you will have more market
|> share in a real open environment.

Wolfgang -

Thank you for your comments. I am only aware of one situation similar to what
you describe.  When IBM licensed version 3.3 of the GL in 1988, the workstation
industry had not coalesced around X Windows yet - SGI, Sun, and others were 
still using other window systems.  The 'GL' then was more than just a rendering
API - it was (at least in the eyes of some ISV's) a font manager and a window system as well.

IBM used the X Window System, and discovered that, like for many in the industry, convincing the ISV community to move to X was, while necessary, not
painless.  They integrated that version of the GL into the X Window System, and
have successfully attracted a number of ISV's to the GL on their line of
workstations.  We worked closely with IBM during that transition period, and,
while that GL was not designed with multiple (non SGI) platforms in mind, we 
did our best to help IBM successfully adopt it (which they did).  IBM's success
with the GL caused them to license OpenGL.  They have actively participated
in the definition of the OpenGL spec (which was release June 30 of this year).

When SGI decided it was appropriate to make the next version of the GL an
open standard, we had to address the portability and vendor neutrality issue.
OpenGL is window system and OS independent (unlike PEX I might add - which
requires an implementor to use, and ONLY use the X Window System).  The font
manager and the GL window system are gone from the specification.  Every aspect of OpenGL is available to all licensees.   A true open standard is one that
can be implemented in many environments - PC's, Mac's and workstations.
ISV's care about all 3 markets - not just the 3% of the desktop computing
market accounted for by the X Window System.  

If you haven't already, please take a look at the man pages.  You can ftp them from sgi.sgi.com ftp/sgi/OpenGL.  They have been available to the public for
over a month now.  I hope this satisfies your need for technical documentation.

Thanks,

bill glazier
silicon graphics 
bglazier@asd.sgi.com