Well this is way off I guess, but interesting anyway ;-) I think Apple works pretty well with standards and open-source generally. And OpenGL is no exception. I even think that Apple supporting OpenGL is a good thing for both OpenGL and Apple dev communities.
answering in the text: On Thu, Mar 20, 2008 at 2:52 PM, Robert Osfield <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Thu, Mar 20, 2008 at 1:35 PM, Raphael Sebbe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > wrote: > > thanks for answering. I understand your point regarding cross platform > > complexity. However, I am pretty convinced that passing the context to > > drawing functions makes sense these days, especially considering the > many > > contexts and threads running in parallel, and I don't get this as a > vendor > > lock-in strategy, although this can be a side-effect of course. > > Ahhh the Steve Job reality distortion field... > > The vendor lock-in comes from getting developers to start off on Apple > then get them hooked on non portable API's, then come the day when you > want to port to another platform you whole architecture is tied up > around these non portable API's. Porting to other platforms becomes > a prohibitive task. > Apple and Microsoft do it all the time. Think how non standard all > MS's and Apple's API's are. They even making porting back to previous > versions of their OS's hard. MS's did 3D graphics with Direct3D > rather than the industry standard OpenGL purely for lock-in and hey > now Apple are tying to use OSX specific extensions to OpenGL that do > the same thing. MS and Apple offer sweeteners, make it easy to > sudducced by their API's with slick and "plausable" marketing and > before you know you're hooked and tied in. > Do you really think Apple introduce new extensions to lock-in developers? My understanding is they do it when they need it, although I agree they don't care about other vendors following it or not... > > The OSG is so portable because I and other resist such vendor lock-in, > any platform specifics are kept well encapsulated enabling the end > users to easily move between platforms. Portability is sweet for a > project like the OSG not only because it gives freedom to end users, > but also means that it's diverse development community can help each. > Windows user writes and OpenGL extension that is portable, submits, I > come it under Linux, then others under OSX, then Solaris, etc, the > same works the other way. All users get to benefit from each other. > Yes, and this is great. What I suggested was not to break compatibility but to improve it on one platform. > > Extensions like Apple's don't benefit anyone except Apple users tied > to the Apple platform. Integrating it into the OSG or other > applications/API's harm *all* other platforms because it takes > developers resources away from things that benefit all platforms, it > adds complexity so adds maintenance burden which further weighs down > the whole product/project/community To be successful as a software > engineer you have to be vigilant about these issues, if you aren't you > can get sucked in by the slick marketing and end up forgetting that > you're developing software for the benefit of all your users, not to a > particular vendor. > Definitely supporting multiple paradigms may take up some dev resources. And I guess this is your role to decide whether to accept that or not. For the second part, I have to disagree. It depends on your project/business, and who your users are. Raphael > > Robert. > _______________________________________________ > osg-users mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.openscenegraph.org/listinfo.cgi/osg-users-openscenegraph.org >
_______________________________________________ osg-users mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openscenegraph.org/listinfo.cgi/osg-users-openscenegraph.org
