" 

 OpenGL isn't a library. It's a language - the Open Graphics Language. It started out as a set of tokens that could be passed from graphics clients to graphics servers, a token stream. The library that everyone's used to using, conceptually, just generates those tokens in the stream for you. OpenGL is /certainly/ not a specification - the ""OpenGL Specification"" is a specification, but OpenGL is a language (or if you're not convinced of that, a 'technology'). The really irritating thing about this is that it used to be on the SGI web site, but I can't find the page anymore ("