> Hardware vendors recognized the long-term benefits of a unified software ecosystem, but in the short term, they were fierce competitors. This led to subtle but significant problems: instead of telling the committee about the hardware features you’re working on (giving a competitor a head start), participants would keep innovations secret until after the hardware shipped, and only discuss it after these features became commoditized (using vendor-specific extensions instead).
I wonder whether this same point is what's holding Vulkan back, which always seems to be trailing behind DX12 when it comes to innovation.