I actually got tipped off about Rich Geldreich leaving Valve in early May, but refrained from saying anything until he stated it publicly, and that has now happened.
In his last blog post he said this, titled "DirectX Creator Says Apple’s Metal Heralds the End of OpenGL" he notes another dig at OpenGL:
So, it seems Rich is completely hung-up on OpenGL vs everything else to include that quote above in his own blog post.
To me it just sounds like more warmongering from Apple fans, but I haven't heard much on Apple's Metal API to properly comment on it. Although it's targetting iOS, and not the desktop. So I utterly fail to see how it will damage OpenGL.
The same kind of thing was said about DirectX 12 that it will blow OpenGL away. Even though a developer from the studio "Naughty Dog" (A big AAA studio) said:
Rich signs off the blog with an actual comment himself:
After his heated blog posts on the state of OpenGL and driver support it's a shame he has left Valve, as he was doing such great work on the VOGL OpenGL debugger which developers have wanted.
I have reached out to Rich for a chat to see if we can find out anything more.
Tell us what you think in the comments folks.
Source Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
In his last blog post he said this, titled "DirectX Creator Says Apple’s Metal Heralds the End of OpenGL" he notes another dig at OpenGL:
Alex St. JohnNearly twenty years later OpenGL still sucks for games, OpenGL drivers are STILL consistently broken across devices, OpenGL is still driven by CAD applications
So, it seems Rich is completely hung-up on OpenGL vs everything else to include that quote above in his own blog post.
To me it just sounds like more warmongering from Apple fans, but I haven't heard much on Apple's Metal API to properly comment on it. Although it's targetting iOS, and not the desktop. So I utterly fail to see how it will damage OpenGL.
The same kind of thing was said about DirectX 12 that it will blow OpenGL away. Even though a developer from the studio "Naughty Dog" (A big AAA studio) said:
Cort Stratton, Naughty DogThat session was pure marketing hyperbole
Rich signs off the blog with an actual comment himself:
Rich Geldreich, Ex-ValveBTW - I'm no longer at Valve or working on vogl. And no, I'm not being paid by, nor do I know anyone still at Apple, lol.
After his heated blog posts on the state of OpenGL and driver support it's a shame he has left Valve, as he was doing such great work on the VOGL OpenGL debugger which developers have wanted.
I have reached out to Rich for a chat to see if we can find out anything more.
Tell us what you think in the comments folks.
Source Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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lol that name :D "Geldreich" is german and means hes got lots of money and then his parents decided to name him Rich.
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You should drop the first part of the blog quote and just leave the part where he says he left Valve.
Any reasonable person is going to be unable to discern what Geldreich said versus what St. John said. The way it's pasted above, it actually looks like you're quoting Geldreich quoting St. John quoting Geldreich badmouthing OpenGL, which doesn't seem to be the case when you follow the links.
Any reasonable person is going to be unable to discern what Geldreich said versus what St. John said. The way it's pasted above, it actually looks like you're quoting Geldreich quoting St. John quoting Geldreich badmouthing OpenGL, which doesn't seem to be the case when you follow the links.
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Pfff sounds more like politics than cold hard logic, not unlike the spats you get between talented developers, each of which has a particular view on how things should be done. The St John article is just rubbish, the dying cries of an old hack trying to get some attention. He makes some valid points but overall the article reeks of bias and opinion. "Nearly twenty years later OpenGL still sucks for games", which is just plain untrue, if your drivers are solid (e.g. Nvidia). It's the PC ecosystem that's difficult to target due to the range of hardware, which is why Apple has such a narrow focus and benefits from this. Metal is IOS only...mobile not desktop, which is why it's such a low level API..duh!! We've come full circle because the mobile revolution brought us back to the beginning again - slower processors needing plenty of optimization techniques to get good performance...
Rich just sounds like he needs a breath of fresh air...and to go back to his favourite API, which is a purely subjective thing. Gabe Newell is a billionaire because he has vision. And currently his vision is SteamOS, and I find this very, very exciting. An OS that targets a huge range of hardware worked for Android and worked for Microsoft. It doesn't necessarily result in the most optimized or refined output, unlike Apple's walled (multiple concentric walls) garden, but it still succeeds, because variation and mutation ensures survival, just like in biology.
Still, sad that Rich has stopped working on VOGL, sounds like he did a great job.
Rich just sounds like he needs a breath of fresh air...and to go back to his favourite API, which is a purely subjective thing. Gabe Newell is a billionaire because he has vision. And currently his vision is SteamOS, and I find this very, very exciting. An OS that targets a huge range of hardware worked for Android and worked for Microsoft. It doesn't necessarily result in the most optimized or refined output, unlike Apple's walled (multiple concentric walls) garden, but it still succeeds, because variation and mutation ensures survival, just like in biology.
Still, sad that Rich has stopped working on VOGL, sounds like he did a great job.
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Quoting: drmothPfff sounds more like politics than cold hard logic, not unlike the spats you get between talented developers, each of which has a particular view on how things should be done. The St John article is just rubbish, the dying cries of an old hack trying to get some attention. He makes some valid points but overall the article reeks of bias and opinion. "Nearly twenty years later OpenGL still sucks for games", which is just plain untrue, if your drivers are solid (e.g. Nvidia). It's the PC ecosystem that's difficult to target due to the range of hardware, which is why Apple has such a narrow focus and benefits from this. Metal is IOS only...mobile not desktop, which is why it's such a low level API..duh!! We've come full circle because the mobile revolution brought us back to the beginning again - slower processors needing plenty of optimization techniques to get good performance...
Rich just sounds like he needs a breath of fresh air...and to go back to his favourite API, which is a purely subjective thing. Gabe Newell is a billionaire because he has vision. And currently his vision is SteamOS, and I find this very, very exciting. An OS that targets a huge range of hardware worked for Android and worked for Microsoft. It doesn't necessarily result in the most optimized or refined output, unlike Apple's walled (multiple concentric walls) garden, but it still succeeds, because variation and mutation ensures survival, just like in biology.
Still, sad that Rich has stopped working on VOGL, sounds like he did a great job.
+1
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@drmoth
Perhaps you missed the previous bit about Alienware shipping SteamMachines with Windows 8. You're right about Newell, he does have a vision: it's exactly the same vision any corporation has, though - and that's to make money make money make money. It's not out of kindness of his heart that Valve "switched" to Linux, it was because they felt Microsoft was threatening their bottom line. What this means is that if he still profits via SteamMachines while letting others (in this case, Alienware) bear the brunt of thinner profit margins, he couldn't care less about Linux, Free software, or whatever other value traditionally associated with those. Of course, Steam has already shown this relationship is really just a dying tradition, as plenty of people have been perfectly happy to support Valve's culture of closedness. In fact, every second post here is praising them in some way. Sound of freedom dying? Cheers of approval.
As for the actual news here, good riddance. I never stop wondering how people who use "lol" to end their sentences get hired by anyone.
Perhaps you missed the previous bit about Alienware shipping SteamMachines with Windows 8. You're right about Newell, he does have a vision: it's exactly the same vision any corporation has, though - and that's to make money make money make money. It's not out of kindness of his heart that Valve "switched" to Linux, it was because they felt Microsoft was threatening their bottom line. What this means is that if he still profits via SteamMachines while letting others (in this case, Alienware) bear the brunt of thinner profit margins, he couldn't care less about Linux, Free software, or whatever other value traditionally associated with those. Of course, Steam has already shown this relationship is really just a dying tradition, as plenty of people have been perfectly happy to support Valve's culture of closedness. In fact, every second post here is praising them in some way. Sound of freedom dying? Cheers of approval.
As for the actual news here, good riddance. I never stop wondering how people who use "lol" to end their sentences get hired by anyone.
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dave was referring to the bit Rich did say where it he ends it with "lol".
I have edited his reply though as it was completely un-needed to call him that.
I have edited his reply though as it was completely un-needed to call him that.
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Not that he's wrong, but Naughty Dog = Sony... Everyone has a bias.
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@commander dave Valve does actually care about open source, because it suits their business model. To that end they've helped improve Linux graphics drivers, given free access to their games to Debian/Ubuntu developers and even helped fund Mesa development if the latest news is correct. They are indeed a commercial venture at heart, but they're one of the more palatable ones I've come across in a while.
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99% of opengl API is useless for efficient GPU programming (see conf of steam dev days)
I do know how to code radeon GPU bare-metal-->opengl API is a joke.
It's *easier* to program bare-metal a radeon GPU than programming it with opengl. This is when an giant alarm bell should be bloody ringing all over the GL community.
"official" GPU driver developers will never let go opengl: it's a massive kludge which allows them to perform a vendor lock-in.
They perfectly know that it will be extremely hard to code an alternative driver. Even so a group of devs achieve that, due to GL api massive implementation complexity, there will be enough implementation differences to force GL user programs to adapt their code to each GL implementation (this is the case between GPU GL drivers, and piglit tests are far from enough). Of course, GL user programs won't do that, most will stick with the "official" vendor implementation.
Open sourcing all drivers in a common GL framework may help. But mesa is on a very bad slop. Yes we will have something that works, but the implementation is really bad (see llvm c++ object-oriented freak show!). And all that should be protected against code closing with the proper GNU GPL license.
Basically, plain simple C without a crazy SDK (no GNU autotools/cmake/etc, basic sh scripts with simple unix makefiles) protected with a GNU *lesser* GPL license.
We need a simplified GL API (...which does not mix shader compilation with run-time GPU programming...). I have little faith in khronos, since those are the guys whose interest is to keep GL as kludgy as possible in order to perform lock-in. Hope they prove me wrong for GL5.
I do know how to code radeon GPU bare-metal-->opengl API is a joke.
It's *easier* to program bare-metal a radeon GPU than programming it with opengl. This is when an giant alarm bell should be bloody ringing all over the GL community.
"official" GPU driver developers will never let go opengl: it's a massive kludge which allows them to perform a vendor lock-in.
They perfectly know that it will be extremely hard to code an alternative driver. Even so a group of devs achieve that, due to GL api massive implementation complexity, there will be enough implementation differences to force GL user programs to adapt their code to each GL implementation (this is the case between GPU GL drivers, and piglit tests are far from enough). Of course, GL user programs won't do that, most will stick with the "official" vendor implementation.
Open sourcing all drivers in a common GL framework may help. But mesa is on a very bad slop. Yes we will have something that works, but the implementation is really bad (see llvm c++ object-oriented freak show!). And all that should be protected against code closing with the proper GNU GPL license.
Basically, plain simple C without a crazy SDK (no GNU autotools/cmake/etc, basic sh scripts with simple unix makefiles) protected with a GNU *lesser* GPL license.
We need a simplified GL API (...which does not mix shader compilation with run-time GPU programming...). I have little faith in khronos, since those are the guys whose interest is to keep GL as kludgy as possible in order to perform lock-in. Hope they prove me wrong for GL5.
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