Core APIs and languages do not expand at an "unfathomable rate". How long as the Berkeley sockets API been with us? TCP/IP? Twos-complement arithmetic? Do you honestly think that those are going to go away for the sake of some vaguely hand-waved "wider implications" and "idea promotion"?
OpenGL has been, like it or not, the only open, widely-adopted, non-proprietary 3D graphics API around for quite some time now. Enabling it on mobile devices wasn't exactly a sea-change requiring tossing all compatibility with the past in order to make progress (especially not as mobile GPUs continue to get more powerful).
jwz's point was that this could have very simply been included as an optional compatibility layer, which he then went and did.
[edited to put in the "not" in the first sentence that my fingers skipped over, which kinda changed the whole argument]
But OpenGL ES does not enable OpenGL on mobile devices; that's the entire point of its existence. It enables OpenGL ES, which is intentionally designed to be a simplified subset.
If mobile device manufacturers feel that full-on OpenGL is appropriate for their device, then they are free to implement full-on OpenGL. JWZ should be complaining to the manufacturer, not the spec authors.
I believe that on modern hardware, OpenGL proper is simply OpenGL ES style features (and then some) with a software compatibility layer.
OpenGL has been, like it or not, the only open, widely-adopted, non-proprietary 3D graphics API around for quite some time now. Enabling it on mobile devices wasn't exactly a sea-change requiring tossing all compatibility with the past in order to make progress (especially not as mobile GPUs continue to get more powerful).
jwz's point was that this could have very simply been included as an optional compatibility layer, which he then went and did.
[edited to put in the "not" in the first sentence that my fingers skipped over, which kinda changed the whole argument]