“Still, short of releasing OpenGL itself to the open source
community this is probably as good as it gets. Open sourcing OpenGL
would eliminate SGI’s licensing revenue strand, so it’s unlikely to
happen for the time being. In any case, there may well be patent
issues that prevent OpenGL being released under the GNU Public
Licence or something similar….”
“Where this leaves Mesa is, however, another matter.
Providing the same features as Mesa, SI is likely to arrive in a
more complete form than Mesa, which remains a work in progress
and, perhaps more to the point, not fully OpenGL compliant (though
it’s damn close).”
“Interestingly, SGI is playing it very cautious here. Its SI FAQ
suggests that Mesa will continue to have a role, primarily in the
development of software renderers, which are likely to be too slow
to be practical under the existing SI. Of course, as hardware
acceleration becomes ever more commonplace, software rendering —
and, by extension, Mesa itself — will become less relevant. SGI
clearly appreciates this and its FAQ holds out the possibility of
merging the two development programmes. That’s not going to happen
yet, and SGI reckons drivers for both OpenGL API implementations
will exist side-by-side for some time.”