Hello everyone,
I heard bad news that Microsoft has quit the ARB. This may have several implications:
Many IHVs will be less interested in making ICDs
IHVs will design their cards with Direct3D in mind
OpenGL drivers will be implemeted as Direct3D wrappers
or at least we should no longer expect opengl32.lib supporting versions other than 1.1, and we have to stick to ARB extensions, or switch to Direct3D.