According to this web site:
http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/08/0...rve_1.html

Lastly, and remember you heard it here, AMD is strongly considering open-sourcing at least a functional subset of ATI’s graphics drivers. It’s time for X Window System, OpenGL, and client virtualization for which ATI binary drivers aren’t available to escape the ghetto of the 1980s-era framebuffer. And what a boon for PR. If AMD’s graphics cards were the only ones with open device drivers, it might affect a buying decision or two.

After reading this:

http://warp2search.net/modules.php?name=...&sid=29439

That seems a pretty likely move, and I think it would be wise and very interesting as it has been widely anticipated by the open source community.

This all doesn't seem to be true. German news portal heise open states in this article from August 12th that ATI does not plan to release further drivers as open source or provide the necessary material for developers to create drivers on their own. Allthough the article is in German they quote some English text from ATI:

The article also states that ATI even blocks the release of a driver that a "well known X.org and kernel developer" has written based on material protected by an NDA. It further states that ATI's documentation on the X800 generation has already been quite thin and that they don't plan to publish any documentation on the current generation of cards.