GPL flag for x.org drivers

[Andreas Girlich]

Sorry for calling it "GPL flag", call it Free Software Flag instead..
or what you like.

> Hello everybody,
> 
> this is just a mail to raise discussion for a well known problem. As
> you might know, some kernel developers want to have a "GPL flag" in the
> sources to ensure, that no GPL violation happens due to the use of
> closed-source drivers.
> 
> What if there is such a flag in X.org? The enterprise I'm working in
> just enjoyed to debug a X-server which uses a closed-source driver
> (see https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10747). Some big
> hardware vendors (ATI, nvidia, matrox) ships its drivers as
> closed-source object code (some other do not, e.g. intel and XGI),
> which makes everything even more difficult than it already is. At the
> same time, they promote the Linux compatibility of their products and
> advertise it for use in special environments. Linux compatibility means
> also support for X11 window system. This would be no problem, if they
> give suitable support for open source developers or system integrators.
> But this support lacks often, while the customer (mostly SI) has an
> urgent problem which needs to be solved. In our special case (see the
> link) we did not get any support by the vendor, but are bound to get a
> solution for the problem.
> 
> While X11 needs to be stable and less buggy, wouldn't it help us to get
> this sources?
> 
> 
> 
> Greets,
> Andreas
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