what does this "tainted kernel" mean

[Markus Tarköy]

Hi there,

as a more or less unexperienced linux user I probably ask a stupid
question. I browsed different archives to search for an answer before
posting but couldn't find a satisfactory answer.

I recently installed YDL 2.3 on my PPC which went pretty OK. As I was
trying then to play around with MOL I ran into problems. Following the
guide at maconlinux.org I issued some commands first to check my
installation.

When I ran startmol --loadonly as root, I got the following warnings:
Loading Mac-on-Linux kernel module:
/usr/lib/mol/0.9.63/modules/2.4.19-pre8/mol.o
Warning: loading /usr/lib/mol/0.9.63/modules/2.4.19-pre8/mol.o will
taint the kernel: forced load
Loading SheepNet ethernet kernel module:
/usr/lib/mol/0.9.63/modules/2.4.19-pre8/sheep_net.o
Warning: loading /usr/lib/mol/0.9.63/modules/2.4.19-pre8/sheep_net.o
will taint the kernel: forced load

So what does this "tainted kernel" thing mean? When I ran startmol --test
it displayed "test successful".

Any help or suggestions are much appreciated

Best regards Markus