The article gives the age as only argument for why it carries all that cruft, but it can never be the only factor. If it were, the 23 year old Linux kernel project would be rotten by now, especially with the 31 year old GNU toolkit.

Sure I understand that there might be some stuff that should be deprecated (much like with HTML elements, the old stuff can be supported while newer projects use newer and better stuff), but rewriting from the ground up also means that you have to re-educate every developer out there. They might as well go and release for Windows instead since they probably have some experience with DirectX too.

Rewriting something that many people use is a bad idea, especially when there are well-funded competitors trying to get developers onto their own platforms.

Unfortunately, it also means GL has 20 yearly of usage history and large numbers of app that using it.

Rewriting those will be much more harder. A lof of them probably not open source.

I don't do 3D programming but have benefited as a happy Steam customer from the great games on Linux now. Having said that, it's generally a bad idea to re-write software with such a massive customer base on the basis of age. The term cruft doesn't qualify this notion. Refine, update sure but re-writing seems like a major overreaction.