It's fair to point out licensing concerns like these.

One thing to emphasize here is that the GPL is a license that makes sense for source code, and isn't very suitable for protected artwork and game assets such as pictures, videos, music, sound effects and 3D models. And I don't think the GPL necessarily prohibits software from being distributed along with assets that are licensed differently, since the code isn't technically "linked" with them. But I too am not a legal expert.

That being said, I was also surprised to see that Tetris Queen game being bundled in the FreeDOS distribution. You could argue that the project is maintained by volunteers with limited time and resources to curate and scrutinize all these contributed applications and games, but the license and copyright issue in that game in particular are indeed pretty blatant.

They should definitely take user reports with such concerns seriously.

In my experience, the FreeDOS mailing lists are the best way to reach out to the FreeDOS maintainers. Have you tried raising the issue there?

eM-!3 wrote on 2026-05-19, 11:27:

When FreeDOS 1.4 was released I took a closer look at their distro and discovered that graphics in one of the games are taken st […]
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When FreeDOS 1.4 was released I took a closer look at their distro and discovered that graphics in one of the games are taken straight from Microsoft's old cards.dll. Game name is Bolitaire and they released it as GPL2 with absolutely no credits to the person who made them: "card pictures : I got it from the internet.". Yup, downloaded from the internet so it must be legit and totally free and they can put it now under freaking GPL2. Original graphics were made by well known pixel artist Susan Kare and are still part of some new commercial products.

Normally I don't care much about US licenses but this time it's a joke because they try to pretend to be pure. I took my time to go to their gitlab and sent there a message but they are not bothered as they didn't react at all. I wouldn't be surprised if they have many more mistakes like this.

BTW, do any of you remember raging war of FreeDOS project and it's pitiful maintainer against Richard Stallman? Yes, they were part of infamous anti RMS letter.

https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/fr … .8/image_0.html
https://kare.com/microsoft/
https://rms-open-letter.github.io/

do i blame rms, sure hes ruined my mind because if i had never knew about the gnu gpl i wouldnt have seen a fragmented landscape. you got microsoft and valve doing nothing while libreoffice and onlyoffice have battles over soverignty.

i try to use libre software but i come back to windows because im stupid and want to be ignorant like i was as a kid just see microsoft as my parents and they take care of the world for me.

trying to fit an ideology in a license backfired on me because its made me paranoid and stubborn trying to change things i have no power. Ive come to expect free as in free maintenance for free software, you dont own it in a physical sense its a license but you are saddled with maintaining it for eternity like a property

digger wrote on 2026-05-20, 21:28:

One thing to emphasize here is that the GPL is a license that makes sense for source code, and isn't very suitable for protected artwork and game assets such as pictures, videos, music, sound effects and 3D models.

For new assets I think it could be done to encourage maintenance and also even be reproducable via script. Like Blender could output images and models if you use a .py script to direct Blender to run exporters, or a batch to make it render to certain png files and go from there. SoX can deal with creating sound effects from scratch. There's been opportunities for ages to do things this way that no one's really tried, and the GPL could apply to data this way.

btw... I seem to remember that cards.dll was one of the freely redistributable libraries with VisualBasic as well as the usual suspects. Might have been an early version like VB 2 or 3, that I saw that in. I guess with the idea that you could make simple card games.

The developer of fd was warned that he had made a mistake by using non-free code in his project. And that warning is a good thing. But snitching on him with the aim of getting him fired of his job, if he doesn’t take steps to correct his mistake, is not a good deed. This is characteristic of the typical behavior of those new “liberals” with their "woke"-ness and "cancel culture". After this thread was created, I’m sure the fd's developer will face the consequences, if he doesn’t take any actions to fix the problem, without the need of anyone to resort such underhanded extra moves, since the corporate a.i. bots are sniffing in this forum 24/7.

igully wrote on 2026-05-20, 21:16:

No, I am using the last build of the Enhanced DR-DOS kernel from this year. You won't find it because it is not out (yet). It […]
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No, I am using the last build of the Enhanced DR-DOS kernel from this year.
You won't find it because it is not out (yet).

It still needs a bit more documentation to complement it (I am demanding when it comes for documentation). Although the full manual, is ready for a release, the FAQ too and the credits and IP acknowledgement too, I need to tidy up the features document and just pack the bloody thing altogether.

Cool! Seems like we will have an alternative to SvarDOS. The only thing I don't like about it is the poor and irregular support for software version updates in the packages. But this is probably due to a lack of people who can work on the packages more regularly, if there are any other people working on it at all, besides the SvarDOS author.

I hope we'll have the chance to test your IONDOS soon. And let’s hope, that the name wouldn’t become a problem for the "copyright holders" of Ion Fury (formerly Ion Maiden), against whom those greedy old hags from the pop band iron maiden had filed a lawsuit because of the originally chosen name 😀

jmarsh wrote on 2026-05-20, 19:51:

And yet... here you are, starting a thread about someone violating some random person's copyright that you have nothing to do with.

If you only spent more than 5 seconds to read my intentions. I laughed off their purity. I remember that they were reviewing included software and removing some which were free but still not free enough - in the same manner as aVd being told that he used wrong open source compiler.

To get it clear as this thread is going of the rails (my own fault) if anyone here is part of their community or have direct access to it just pass the message about Bolitaire using graphics from MS Windows. I tried and couldn't reach them. I'm not using mailing lists, I'm not registered on GitLab, I don't really use Facebook, YouTube was auto removing my comments under FreeDOS channel etc.

BitWrangler wrote on 2026-05-21, 00:45:

btw... I seem to remember that cards.dll was one of the freely redistributable libraries with VisualBasic as well as the usual suspects. Might have been an early version like VB 2 or 3, that I saw that in. I guess with the idea that you could make simple card games.

Now that's something. I can't tell as I never used VB but I know there were many solitaires made in late 90s / early 00s made in VB. Can they strip graphics out of it and use it anywhere in a software unrelated to Windows and state about them "downloaded from internet"? Form my own ethics I would still want to keep credits to original makers. I didn't release any of my software in public but if I did I wouldn't want to remove information about original authors. I really like when some devs are also mentioning software/games which inspired them even though it's not required by law.

I've checked Tetris Queen. At least they are making credits to Queen band members but yes... I don't find any statement in two mentioned games that graphics or music is of unknown license or on a different license than rest of the package which is released as GPL. I know that bands can't release song's cover until original author will allow it. But at the same time they are allowed to play it live so this law is funny.

No more comments from me about RMS, cancel culture, politics etc.