I wouldn’t mind the 15 minute delay, so if you can still drag some AMD driver dev here that would be great to get some insight in what is going on behind the scenes. For the same reason I follow some of the topics here to get some insight about where OpenGL is heading, responses from people like you are highly appreciated by me.
This was also true for the newsletter. While I see that it costs time and new developments can be made quicker when not writing a newsletter, the info coming from a newsletter is of tremendous value. It keeps people informed about new developments, therefore people might also get interested in OpenGL and info coming via an official channel also raises confidence in the organization.
Atm the only way to get insight in OpenGL development is reading the forums, it would be great if there was a more official way to get informed about the upcoming 3.1 spec (when it is coming, what features it contains, etc.), or some nice code examples how to program in OpenGL efficiently (I liked the sheets from SIGGRAPH Asia 2008 that are currently on the opengl.org frontpage in the news section for example).
Anyway: more insights from behind the scenes would be appreciated, whether this comes in the form of a newsletter, or in the form of insiders posting in the forums doesn’t really matter for me. I’d like it either way.
Officially informed through the forums? Forget it. They even fear to identify themselves as ARB members (eg. adding the company name as subtitle or their logo as avatar). By suggesting this I nearly made a fool of myself, some time ago.
I don’t think the individuals that make up the ARB have permission to represent their respective companies in casual, public forum discussions. Permission or no, such an undertaking would likely not be fortuitous for those well meaning members concerned, as any confusion or expectation ignited in causal exchange would in all probability lead as many or more dissatisfied onlookers back to the individual members in question, as opposed to the ARB as a whole. Don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t find that a very enviable position to be in…
“Hey, Joe said we’d have feature X by time Y.”, said the first.
“Yeah, where the heck is Joe? Haven’t seen him in a while.”, said the second.
“That good for nothing Joe really got my hopes up, and now I’m plenty steamed!”, said the third.
“Let’s all send Joe a wheel of Jarlsberg cheese!”, said the fourth.
“Ninny!”, said the fifth.
“Ass!”, said the sixth.
…
In truth, after the ruckus over GL3, I wouldn’t blame the ARB in the least for avoiding this forum like a Klingon pain stick, at least in an official capacity
