Games from Parallel Realities and non-free/illegal data

[Sylvain Beucler]

Hi Games Packagers,

Parallel Realities recently clarified the licensing of their
games' data, which were first believed to be GPL'd:

  http://www.parallelrealities.co.uk/about/

  "Please be aware, however, that game assets are Non Free and should
  not be distributed as part of Linux or made available within any
  source repositories that does not allow non-free assets"

Therefore the game data are actually non-free.


In addition, the author also mentioned at:

  http://www.happypenguin.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=4725

that their games contain illegaly redistributed ressources from
the Internet, notably graphics and music.


The affected games are mainly:
- Project: Starfighter
- Blob Wars : Metal Blob Solid
- Blob Wars : Blob And Conquer
- Virus Killer


This was reported at Fedora and Debian:
  https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-games-list/2008-August/msg00027.html
  http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=496617


After recently discussing it within the Debian Games team, we're in
the process of sending removal requests for starfighter and
viruskiller.  I also copy Guus Sliepen who packaged blob wars so we
can discuss removal for them too.


I see that the packages are still available in Fedora (I didn't
check other distros).  Did you reach similar conclusions?

Cheers,

-- 
Sylvain
from the Debian Games team