In other words, have older capabilities been dropped from later driver releases that were present in earlier releases? For example, Given a particular video card, if the hardware manufacturer feels that a capability has been antiquated and therefore the company no longer feels the need to include it in their drivers.
Caps??
Why are you talkin’ in Direct<peep> language? 
(may Tux forgive you for saying that on a forum like this)
Afaik only that patch thingie extension from NVIDIA ever got dropped…
(pcmiiw)
if memory still serves me nvidia dropped NV_evaluators
Yes, that’s the one I meant!
I think ARB_vertex_weighting was dropped too, but that’s because vertex_program replace them.
Too lazy to check my extension list 