[Fedora-legal-list] Vague permissions on Mah Jong game

Göran Uddeborg goeran at uddeborg.se
Tue Feb 9 15:10:27 UTC 2010


I'm considering to package a Mah Jong game called mj
(http://mahjong.julianbradfield.org/).  (It's the real game, not the
solitaire thing often called Mah Jong.)

It's mostly GPLv2+, but there is one exception concerning the pixmaps
for the tiles.  This is the relevant part of the tiles-v1/README file:

    Most of tile pixmaps in this directory derive from the pixmaps distributed
    with the old xmahjongg solitaire game.

    The tiles were originally black and white, produced by Mark A. Holm,
    subject to a "non-profit only" licence.

    The coloured versions were produced by Eddie Kohler, and in so far as
    they are different works (a debatable point, I think), are distributed 
    under the Gnu General Public License Version 2 or later, which may be
    found in the file GPL.

I would assume that a "non-profit only license" is not ok for Fedora.
But I couldn't find it explicitly stated in the FAQ or elsewhere, so I
thought I'd check.

And how would we treat the third paragraph.  If it is "debatable" if
the tiles are GPL or "non-profit only"?  Is the uncertainty enough to
exclude it, or how are such cases handled?



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