What are you hoping to get out of this thread? Is there a specific problem you're trying to solve? Are you just here to vent about old versions of OpenGL? Is there something else?
I agree that the old OpenGL library wasn't the right API in the long term (Direct X got a lot closer initially) but OpenGL won out because it was easier to draw a triangle with it and having a high-level API made it easier to deal with all of the wildly different kinds of hardware around at the time.
If you disagree with that direction, it's understandable. But if you are in 2024 and complaining that OpenGL 2.0 lacked some feature you feel is vitally important, I don't know what to say. It's in the past. There's nothing anyone can do to change it. You are shouting into the void. Buildings rendered with OpenGL 1.2 aren't going to get a lot better than Deus Ex or Max Payne. That's why OpenGL released newer versions and graphics card manufacturers released newer cards.