Khronos, Mesa, Standards & Conformance / Certification: Open Source, Open Standards

The past week or two in our forums and elsewhere there's been a lot of comments about Khronos' conformance testing for OpenGL 4.4/4.5 with the Mesa drivers finally reaching that point, concern over Khronos' fees being prohibitive for open-source projects (particularly in cases like Nouveau where it's community driven without a main corporate backer), and some FUD related to this matter. I've now received some clarification from The Khronos Group to lay these concerns to rest...