The interesting thing about this comment is that OGL allows such vendor specific extensions without totally destroying everything else. No need to sit around for 2-3 years and wait on MS, people can start programming for that hardware relatively easily. My understanding (not too involved in 3D) is that vendors usually mimic any unique extensions that their competitors might have, but even so it's easy to test caps and turn off a feature if hardware doesn't support it (in fact, all games do this, even DX games; you still have to test caps and profile hw to know what code paths to run and what features to enable). A well-architected engine is flexible and allows you to write sfx even if only one card on the market supports that feature without much hassle, and this is a lot easier to do in OGL with its extensions model than DX, afaik.

Again, not too heavy on the 3D, please correct anything I got wrong.

I agree about open drivers, though. There is such a wide field of possibilities with open drivers if vendors would only take them seriously and quit being so paranoid about "their IP" and all that. I think great OSS drivers is one of the most important goals for desktop Linux atm.