Re: Rethinking the design of xwidgets

[Arthur Miller]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

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>
>   > OpenGL features are queried at runtime, but I am not sure
>   > if this feature would be *legal* in Emacs; I mean loading a function
>   > pointer at runtime from a so/dll is essentially ffi, which I
>   > understand is not allowed in Emacs for legal purposes.
>
> If the function you are linking to is implemented by a
> GPL-3-compatible library, Emacs can link to it in any way
> that is convenient.
It depends on the OpenGL implementation the user has installed on the
system. I don't see how is that different from running Emacs on a
non-free system, since Emacs has to link to a graphics library provided
by OS, GDI on Windows for example, which in turn anyway link to same
graphics driver that OpenGL/CL/EGL are linked to. Even on a GNU/Linux if
user has an AMD/Nvidia gfx card there is some firmware blob that gets
installed and graphcis applications inclusive Emacs run on it.

> What is the source license of OpenGL 2.1?
> I expect that it is GPL-3-compatible, but it can't hurt to verify that.

OpenGL is an open standard developed by Khronos: www.opengl.org

Mesa driver you have installed on your computer is open source, but I
don't know if licence is "free" or not:

https://docs.mesa3d.org/license.html