Whats the difference between extensions and core functionality?
New functionality usually begins as a vendor-specific extension, in which case it gets a vendor name, like GL_NV_some_new_functionality. The vendor prefix depends on which company or person which is behind the initial extension. If more vendors decides to support the extension, it might get promoted to EXT, which means “multivendor extension”. Finally, an extension can be “blessed” by the ARB board and become an ARB extension. OpenGL implementations are strongly encouraged to support ARB extensions. Such extensions bare much weight. Finally, after existing some time as an ARB extension, the new functionality might get promoted to core, which means that the functionality becomes a part of the official OpenGL specification for the next version. IMPORTANT NOTE: Do not assume that ARB extensions are core functionality does the same thing! Extensions promoted to OpenGL core often go through final changes.
