Hi JS, On Fri, Feb 27, 2009 at 9:26 PM, Jean-Sébastien Guay <[email protected]> wrote: > OK, seems I understand the basics after all. So why are competing standards > a bad thing if they're inherent to the nature of open standards? Or > conversely, why are open standards so desirable if by their nature, they > bring about competing standards which are undesirable?
Competing standards are a bad thing as it breaks interoperability and divides the market place into targeting one or other, or both standards. For software vendors trying to use the standards they just one a workable solution, with minimum of effort, so naturally will want to target one rather than two standards, as supporting two is often far harder than twice as much work as inconsistencies creep in, and you often end up targeting the lowest common denominator of both. If you do just target one of the standards then your market is potentially diminished. Multiple standards covering the same area are bad for software vendors. For the hardware vendors multiple standards means again they have to target one, or both. Target one as they only cover part of the market, target two and their resources will be stretched. If one is targeting two then outside and internal pressures can exist to skew the effort made to supporting one or other of the standards, only in a perfect world might you see equal support. In our case, OpenGL should have been dominant - it has all the right attributes, it was open, it was cross platform, it was mature and extensible. Direct3D when MS introduced was non of these things, it was awful, it wasn't even completive under Windows let alone dropping all the other positives attributes that OpenGL had like portability and openness. However, MS would be MS if it didn't use it's monopoly position and dirty tactics to manipulate the market, and to try and kill OpenGL under Windows. Yes MS eventually got Direct3D so they it was feature competitive to OpenGL, but it still lacks the major features of OpenGL - it's openness, portability and extensibility. If the market had not been artificially skewed by MS's monopoly Direct3D would never have got a foot hold. Now stretch the surface on what this has meant for hardware vendors, MS's has a huge hold over them, it has the ability to deicide what features get exposed in hardware or not, the hardware vendors have hardware to develop and this takes years, if they feel that a certain feature is worthy of inclusion it has to work with MS to get it in the spec, but MS always has the right to ignore them as it's in control. DIrect3D isn't extensible so if MS doesn't support their hardware features then they are screwed, their is silicon going to waste, and silicon costs money to manufacture - your profit margins are very much on the line. This means the hardware vendors have little wiggle room not to do as MS wishes, and MS plays then off against each other. MS also gets to influence their other efforts, if they go too far out of line in other areas like pushing OpenGL MS can just not play ball, they can drop them in it by not supporting their cards fully. Since MS successfully got Direct3D to be dominant on the dominant desktop platform, not support Direct3D well for the hardware vendors is suicide, and will extra pressure from MS to sideline OpenGL it won't be too surprising that the OpenGL dev teams will be smaller and less well funded. With the growth of alternate platforms the OpenGL teams will be even more stretched, as they don't just have Windows 2000, XP, Vista and 7 to support but they have Linux, FreeBSD, OSX, Solaris, embedded platforms. Now market size is smaller for these other platforms so revenue is also less significant. It's easy to see that given this situation a hardware vendor might choose an easy life and just focus on Direct3D and sideline OpenGL. Now with a sidelined OpenGL, the quality and feature support will suffer, and it'll become less compelling a platform, it certainly has been under a lot of pressure. But it's software vendors like ourselves that are the pain in the butts, we demand OpenGL support, because we require portability, we require access to OpenGL extensions to get the best out of the hardware, we need longevity of support without having to refactor our code every couple of years to target the latest hardware features exposed by the next Direct3D version. Thankfully the hardware vendors have listened to our needs are kept OpenGL alive, albeit it far less vibrant than it would be if the hardware vendors weren't beholden to the whims of MS. So... the suggestion that somehow competing standards is a good thing for us rather galling. The market reality really is pretty ugly. It's are area of the market that really really deserves and Anti-trust case, but alas MS has those best placed to request it (the hardware vendors that develop OpenGL) by the balls so they won't complain, if they do MS just has to squeeze and their will feel real financial pain. The rest of the world won't have much direct evidence to bring the situation to court. An Anti-Trust case is also addressing the problem after the horse has bolted. The savour of the market is software vendors sticking to their guns and demanding OpenGL support, and alternate platforms to Windows become big enough that the hardware vendors simply can't ignore OpenGL, and once these alternate markets get big enough the vendors can start being working on stronger terms in their dealing with MS. If when can get this this tipping point then MS themselves will have to support OpenGL better to enable them to compete. That day is the day when we can rejoice, as everybody on all platforms will benefit. So we are looking for two trends - wider usage of OpenGL under Windows (more killer apps), and growth of non windows platforms that require OpenGL. The later is happening, the former is still under attack by MS and those beholden to Direct3D. Personally wanting to see Direct3D and Windows market share diminish isn't an anti-Windows users desire, if we get these things then OpenGL will be have to become more competitive under Windows and Windows users will get a better experience. Robert. _______________________________________________ osg-users mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openscenegraph.org/listinfo.cgi/osg-users-openscenegraph.org
