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Standardized or Proprietary?

Direct3D and OpenGL Shed Light On The Tradeoffs

Posted February 9, 2025 by Nicholas Wilt — originally on Substack.

NOTE: This article originally was posted in May 2021. -Ed.

As the industry absorbs the implications of the Google v. Oracle ruling, which essentially put proprietary APIs on the same footing as standardized ones, understanding the differences between standardized and proprietary APIs will become more important. The differences between closed and open source software have been well-plumbed; the differences between proprietary and standardized APIs, less so.

I’m a veteran of two API competitions that shed light on the tensions between the philosophies of proprietary and standardized APIs and the way they intersect with market realities: OpenGL/Direct3D and CUDA/OpenCL1. I’ve always been on the proprietary side of these competitions: Direct3D is proprietary to Microsoft Windows, and CUDA is proprietary to NVIDIA.

This article will discuss the OpenGL/Direct3D history from my (admittedly incurably biased) standpoint as the former development lead for Direct3D.

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