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

[Tom "spot" Callaway]

On 02/09/2010 10:10 AM, Göran Uddeborg wrote:
> 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?

If the coloured tiles appear to be identical to the black and white
tiles, except, well, coloured in, then they're a derived work of the
original black and white tiles and have the same license problem as the
original tiles.

Licenses which restrict resale are non-free, and not acceptable for Fedora.

I suspect that there are freely licensed tile pixmaps in one of the
other Mah Jong games out there that could be repurposed. If not, perhaps
this is a project that Fedora Design could help out with.

~spot