New DirectX Shader Compiler Based on Clang/LLVM Open-Sourced

While it&#x27;s really nice they built this on open source compiler infrastructure, it&#x27;s also too bad they took all the LLVM code and changed the license headers on it (additionally pretending to relicense it and changing the copyright string) when that&#x27;s 100% not okay:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;Microsoft&#x2F;DirectXShaderCompiler&#x2F;blob&#x2F;master&#x2F;include&#x2F;llvm&#x2F;IR&#x2F;Instruction.h#L5-L7" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;Microsoft&#x2F;DirectXShaderCompiler&#x2F;blob&#x2F;mast...</a><p>I&#x27;m sure it was a script, but this needs to be fixed, stat.<p>Sadly, not even the first time: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;Microsoft&#x2F;WinObjC&#x2F;issues&#x2F;35" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;Microsoft&#x2F;WinObjC&#x2F;issues&#x2F;35</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10024377" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10024377</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10018208" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10018208</a> (which devolved into a licensing discussion)<p>It&#x27;d be nice if folks paid a little more attention, because for releases from large companies, stuff spreads quickly, which means a year from now, there are still likely to be &quot;mit licensed&quot; copies of this that are still wrong :(

Hopefully it will be of some help for this effort: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;KhronosGroup&#x2F;glslang&#x2F;issues&#x2F;362" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;KhronosGroup&#x2F;glslang&#x2F;issues&#x2F;362</a><p>I&#x27;m kind of surprised that this happened, though I&#x27;ve heard it could happen from glslang developers. It helps reducing DX&#x2F;HLSL lock-in, and it&#x27;s as if usual MS management responsible for such lock-in fell asleep, and developers managed to release something good for the world for once.

I gotta say, this &quot;new, open Microsoft&quot; is really surprising me. I think what this signals is the end of selling software. Microsoft has seen the writing on the wall and realize that the money is in subscriptions and services.<p>Due to piracy, a company can no longer just release an incremental update of their software package every couple years. They have to have rolling updates and constant improvements to keep the money stream rolling in from their customers.<p>This is why MS is focusing on Azure, Office 360, Windows 10, etc.

So now all the &quot;NDA&quot; excuses for not releasing graphic drivers source code are gone?

Oh they are still working on DirectX 12.<p>Microsoft has the tendency to downside and almost stop development after reaching near monopoly of a niche. Everyone remembers the Internet Explorer 6 years, it took years and Firefox reaching 25% market share to continue development of IE7. The same with DirectX: DirectX 9 was too successful, and OpenGL supported was limited to OpenGL 1 in WinXP and onwards (only tricks like bootstrapping allows OpenGL2+ on Win). DirectX 9 was around for many years. When OpenGL 3 and 4 came around, Microsoft restarted development of DirectX 10. DirectX 11 was merely a maintenance release. When the new AMD API (now Vulcan) came along, Microsoft restarted development with DirectX 12. Nowadays 99.9% of all new games are DirectX10&#x2F;11 or Vulcan and support Win7+ and are usually available over Steam and&#x2F;or GoG. And PlayStation 4 is very successful worldwide. XBoxOne is mainly successful in US and has little presents worldwide, Microsoft even stopped announcing sales two years ago - it&#x27;s that bad. Nor are there any new exclusive games to speak of, PS4 has dozends of exclusive games, Win7+ has millions of exclusive games. Win10 Store is a complete desaster, worst software ever and hardly anyone would use it to buy games, if there are far better alternatives like Steam and GoG. Is DirectX 12 still a thing?