X.Org Foundation Moving Ahead With Becoming A Khronos Adopter For Mesa

While there were initially concerns by users over OpenGL 4.4~4.5 support being exposed for open-source Mesa drivers due to the Khronos OpenGL conformance test suite for these newer versions and the associated costs, those concerns were laid to rest and the X.Org Foundation is moving ahead with becoming an official Khronos adopter for Mesa.

For the background to this matter and the clarifications about Khronos adoption by open-source software projects, it's all explained in this recent post: Khronos, Mesa, Standards & Conformance / Certification: Open Source, Open Standards. So if you are confused, go read that post.

What's new to report on now is that at last week's X.Org Board of Directors meeting they agreed to move forward with becoming a "Khronos adopter" to cover the Mesa project. Details are still to be worked out, but per the meeting summary and the IRC logs, things are moving forward.

This is of benefit to Mesa but especially for the Nouveau driver where it's all community-based and no formal backing by any major organization. Intel already has pursued OpenGL / OpenGL ES Khronos compliance by their drivers and AMD is also a Khronos member whereas the Nouveau development is mostly volunteer-focused without any access to the OpenGL CTS (Conformance Test Suite).