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Comment by om2 | Hacker News Reader

We're committed to abiding by the W3C Patent Policy for this spec.

That's a positive thing, but the whole effort looks like an indirect attempt to push Metal, without making it open itself. What about shader tools and etc.? Are there any open ones for Metal? IMHO if anything like that should be created, it should be based on open APIs.

We think the eventual shader language will not be based on MSL. We need both source and binary formats, and MSL doesn't even have a public binary format at this time. However, if we do end up with something MSL-inspired, the same commitment to follow the Patent Policy would apply.

I think it's a sane expectation to use something that is both open and already available. GLSL, SPIR-V and etc. Using something like MSL won't go anywhere, if there won't be comparable, open and freely available implementation already.

You should take that idea seriously, if you want to view it as a truly collaborative project that invites everybody's participation. I.e using MSL from the start was a major mistake.

Quoting from their proposal:

> We don’t expect this to become the actual API that ends up in the standard, and maybe not even the one that the Community Group decides to start with, but we think there is a lot of value in working code.

I think it's pretty natural to write what is essentially a proof-of-concept with tools one is ga,iliar with.

It's a prototype with an explicit understanding that MSL is only a place holder. What is there to understand?

Expect some friction :)

Expect the developers that have been abandoned by Apple not to move at all.

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