Could we dispense the near clipping plane?
The near clipping plane in rasterizing setups with perspective projection is there to avoid a divide by 0 and bound the possible depths for orthogonal projection.

With a bit of extra math you can make the depth stored in the depth buffer linear again. However you still need the guard against the divide by 0.

In raytracing the near plane can be at 0 no problem. There is nothing technical stopping you from putting it at -10 however (besides that it would be very odd).