Phantom Open Emoji was originally distributed under the most open license conditions possible. Unfortunately, some contributors to the project who orderd custom emoji did not understand these conditions. As things stand now we have been forced to make Phantom Open Emoji a little less open. Still, POE is perfectly usable in Open Source software - just be careful what emoji you include and how you use them.
The source code in forks is still under the license listed at the time of the fork. However, emoji image asset copyright and licensing conditions have been altered, any usage after the date of alteration listed in LICENSE.md must be according to the terms and conditions listed there, and the asset licenses in forks are considered null and void. Luckily however the license conditions on POE still allow you to use POE assets very freely for just about anything other than commercial physical/tangible items. Using POE in your app? You're still fine, but maybe take out the "restricted" emoji if you have included them. If you don't it is possible you'll be at the copyright holders mercy.
This will very soon be possible with a sub-license. We'll update this section as soon as we have all the details worked out. Just keep in mind if you do use any assets without such a sub-license in a physical product we may be forced to take legal action to protect copyright. While this may sound like it goes against the open nature of what POE should have been, keep reading for an explanation of why this is actually helping us provide a more open and better set of emoji to you.
Not exactly. But we weren't happy settling with a partially completed emoji set that's been tainted by copyright confusion. So we're making "emojidex", a free and extremely Open Source friendly emoji set and service. We're still finishing up some code and the legal details - but if you'd like to get involved plese feel free to contact us.
Someone decided to take POE emoji and distribute them as a for-pay digital download - attempting to claim copyright in the process. This is unforgivable to us. It completely negates everything we tried to do with POE and it is a threat to the copyright, which in turn would be a threat to the usage rights of POE if we did not put a stop to it. If you claim copyright or try to sell licenses to POE or to sell POE as digital assets we WILL take legal action against you. DO bundle POE with closed source software, DO NOT charge for anything in any way from POE. POE emoji are not to be sold as stamps. They are not to be sold as extensions. They are not to be sold as content packs. They are not to be sub-licensed. You have been warned.