[shmerl]

> Yes, there is MESA - so if software rendering suffices one can use more open options.

Mesa has hardware accelerated implementation of OpenGL. You don't need "big org" to do it. But it surely helps if they put resources into that work.

> of which Microsoft is one, and not worse as the others (

It's worse than many others because their goal is not to improve the graphics stack, but to lock everyone into using MS systems.

[fsloth]

>> Yes, there is MESA - so if software rendering suffices one can use more open options. >Mesa has hardware accelerated implementation of OpenGL. You don't need "big org" to do it. But it surely helps if they put resources into that work.

The hardware specific driver is the more laborious thing to get correct. Well, OpenGL as well, but the driver is what I was after, not the specific API on top of it, and if the driver is buggy the OpenGL implementation on top can only try to patch things only so much.

>> of which Microsoft is one, and not worse as the others ( > It's worse than many others because their goal is not to improve the graphics stack, but to lock everyone into using MS systems.

I don't think there is any way MS can lock everyone into using their system.

I would claim MS has driven innovation in hardware accelerated realtime graphics by providing a stable and tested API at a time when OpenGL implementations were buggy and broken due to the messy work Khronos did with the standard and the way the implementations were done.

[shmerl]

> I would claim MS has driven innovation

Not really, especially recently. They were pretty slow (because OpenGL was even slower to evolve), and only woke up when AMD voiced their interest to open up Mantle (which became Vulkan). So AMD were the main innovator in the recent times, when graphics APIs are concerned.