[Openal] Incompatibilities between Linux and Windows implementations

[Garin Hiebert]

The good news on this issue is that there are not very incompatabilities
of critical importance.  The bad news is that there isn't really anybody
in charge (or a group) who can authoritatively make a final decision on
the remaining incompatablities, and there is no guarantee that someone
will have the time to make the fixes even if a decision was made.  Given
the current situation, my inclination is to not stir things up at the
moment.  There are a variety of OpenAL extensions being worked on by
interested parties right now (organized at the last GDC and through the
openal-devel list), and I think that's about as much as our very
informal organization can handle at the moment.  (A note -- I'll put an
item on my to-do list to put the proposed extensions and other work on
the website.)

That said, there are indications -- many of which I can't publically
share -- that OpenAL will be reaching some kind of "critical mass"
sometime over the next year or so and that as a result we will end up
with a formal organization again.  I expect that once that happens we
will move to create OpenAL 2.0 (or 1.5, or 1.1 -- I don't know what it
would be called) and would seek to create an even stronger standard the
second time around.

Garin