About commercial use

Hi, everyone. I would like to know: can I use OpenGL to develop commercial, closed-source software? Thanks in advance!

Yes. The Open refers to the fact that the specification is freely available. OpenGL is not open-source.

OpenGL is not software either, so conceptions such as “open source” don’t even apply.

List of Programs using OpenGL

Thanks, guys. So I don’t have to pay anything to use OpenGL in a commercial, closed-source software?

OpenGL isn’t like that. OpenGL is just a layer between your program and the graphics hardware that translates function calls you make into language the hardware can understand. Your hardware vendor implements the OpenGL spec in their driver so you’re not “using OpenGL”; you’re using your hardware vendor’s implementation of it. The same kind of principles as apply to software in general don’t apply to it at all.