Legal status of chess game collections

[Lukas Geyer <geyer@ml.kva.se>]

I am just working on repackaging gnuchess to split it into gnuchess and
gnuchess-book. The problem with gnuchess-book is that it is basically a
large collection of uncommented chess games in PGN format. It used to be
included in gnuchess but now it has been separated mainly due to its size.
However, this new package needs a license, and I am not quite sure about
what the license is. I asked Simon Waters, who has been maintaining
gnuchess upstream for some time. His answer is:

  I think uncommented Chess games are effectively free of
  copyright restrictions. They are collaborative performance art
  or some such bizarre legal status.

  I probably ought to clarify the legal position and add it to the
  FAQ.

So does anyone know how to handle this?

Cheers, Lukas

P.S.: Please Cc me on replies.


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