http://www.sgi.com/tech/openGL/paper.design/subsection3_3_6.html (Silicon Surf Promotional CD, 01/1995)
It might seem that design of a clean, consistent 3D graphics API would be a suficient goal in itself. But unless programmers decide to use the API in a variety of applications, designing the API will have served no purpose. It is therefore worthwhile to consider the effect of design decisions on programmer acceptance of the API.