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Some C++ programmers love writing cross-platform code, with platform including non-UNIX platforms here, so /dev/random just won't work. That's why you'd need an "abstract standard name".

One of the largest user audiences of C++ is game developers, and (excluding mobile) 99% of their target platforms don't have /dev/random, so it's perfectly normal to want an abstract random device.

As a side note, if you've actually read the article through you'd learn that:

1. The Boost.Random stuff entered the C++ standard back in TR1 (published in 2007), way earlier than C++17. 2. Even if your seed is perfectly random, rand() would give you crappy distribution. 3. srand()/rand() is not re-entrant, which makes it a really bad idea to use it in any codebase that has a chance to grow larger one day. 4. Even if the seed is truly random, rand would give you crappy distribution and thus it has no legitimate uses other than making a game where its easy to cheat. 5. None of the rand() alternatives is in the C standard, and most are highly platform-specific. C++, on the other hand, had very good standard random generators for the last 8 years or so, which is very nice for the language that didn't even have standard strings for 15 of its existence.