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Mame's announcement of freedom:
After 19 years, MAME [originally stood for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator -Ed.] is now available under an OSI-compliant and FSF-approved license! Many thanks to all of the contributors who helped this to go as smoothly as possible!
We have spent the last 10 months trying to contact all people that contributed to MAME as developers and external contributors and get information about desired license. We had limited choice to 3 that people already had dual-license MAME code with.
As a result, a great majority of files (over 90% including core files) are available under the 3-Clause BSD License but project as a whole is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License, version 2 or later (GPL-2.0+), since it contains code made available under multiple GPL-compatible licenses.
MAME's purpose is to preserve decades of software history. As electronic technology continues to rush forward, MAME prevents this important "vintage" software from being lost and forgotten. This is achieved by documenting the hardware and how it functions.
[This pertains strictly to the MAME software itself; getting ROM images that would run on MAME is a separate matter. -Ed.]
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 09 2016, @03:55PM
Having interacted with the guys who run the project. They really dont care that much about 'public relations'. They care about emulating things. They actually have a history of tying to 'keep it on the low down'. Why? Because what they are doing is rather sketchy if it is legal or not. In some cases it is clearly legal other cases not so clear cut. I think their project goals are basically 'if it is a computer emulate it'. They have been around a long time. They have seen their share of C&D letters and competitors shut down because of it. Also by keeping 'on the low' they keep their costs low. Some people out there figured out 'what is not in MAME must therefor be rare and worth 10k for this one board' even though it is some crap game and there is a reason there is one board.
The SD version of this discussion had a better summary. http://games.slashdot.org/story/16/03/04/1334202/mame-released-under-osi-compliant-fsf-approved-license [slashdot.org]
Basically they have spent the past year trying to make as much of the code BSD. With the whole project released as GPL. It is a nice compromise. People can use the individual bits of code for other emulators. But if they release the whole project they have to release the code.
http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=8835021&cid=51638393 [slashdot.org]
Also this comment on SD is relevant. Out of the few hundred people who have contributed over the years they got them to say what they wanted done with their code. They got it down to three contributors that code was removed because they could not find them.
The real problem they have is number of developers. They unfortunately chased off a lot of people because of the way the project used to be run. It was very 'only arcade anything else work on a different project'. That unfortunately created a lot of spin off projects. MAME itself suffered because of it. They finally fixed that but lack of developers hurts.
Also another problem they have is the 'easy' stuff is done. At this point it is figuring how to properly run something at the signal level that say a N64 needs. You can simulate an N64 pretty good. But the MAME guys want a true emulation of it. Something like these 2 chips https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwEdqAb2l50 [youtube.com] needs to be properly done for them to consider it 'good'. They want to get to the level of something like higan for everything. But that will take time and developers willing to do it.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Pino P on Wednesday March 09 2016, @04:00PM
what they are doing is rather sketchy if it is legal or not.
Sketchy perhaps; legal yes, at least in SN's home country. In Sony v. Connectix [wikipedia.org], the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that emulation is largely fair use.
ROM sites, on the other hand...
(Score: 0, Troll) by Francis on Wednesday March 09 2016, @04:37PM
How do you legally get the ROMs to run in MAME? I like MAME, but only a tiny fraction of the people using it for arcade games could be seen as doing so legally. Most of them are using pirated ROMs because obtaining one of those machines is rather difficult.
(Score: 2) by Lunix Nutcase on Wednesday March 09 2016, @06:34PM
Go to archive.org and download them.
https://archive.org/details/messmame [archive.org]
(Score: 1) by Francis on Thursday March 10 2016, @01:03AM
Those aren't legally available as far as I know, they're at best abandonware.
(Score: 2) by Lunix Nutcase on Thursday March 10 2016, @06:23PM
Yeah they are. They got a DMCA exception.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Friday March 11 2016, @12:42AM
That's nice, but that just means that they're permitted to circumvent the copyprotection, it doesn't grant them the right to distribute the files as the files themselves remain subject to copyright restrictions.
I've got Karma to burn, so what the hell, but I wish people would stop spreading the misinformation about this. The files themselves are not legal to distribute as they remain subject to the same copyright protection they had under previous copyright laws. They just have the right to do the things that the DMCA specifically banned.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 09 2016, @05:02PM
Also it is not entirely clear anymore as those cases happened mostly before the DMCA copyright bill. Which does not have provisions for circumventing DRM and in fact explicitly prohibits it. There is also the one Atari v Nintendo (as mentioned in that video I linked).
I know about those cases. There are at least 2-3 more that allow it. However 'by law' it is not. Hence my comment of 'sketchy'. Sketchy may be a bit harsh. Ambiguous would be a better term. Under the courts it is permissible. However it will not stop companies from trying to use the law again.
I know you *want* it to be perfectly legal and above board. I do too as I think it is very beneficial to everyone involved. The way DMCA is written currently though does not allow it. The courts have been eroding what the law says and there are some solid cases to allow it. But it would be better to fix the law.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Wednesday March 09 2016, @05:23PM
Sony v. Connectix
those cases happened mostly before the DMCA copyright bill.
The DMCA became law in October 1998, and Sony v. Connectix was decided in February 2000.
There is also the one Atari v Nintendo (as mentioned in that video I linked).
The court found for Nintendo in the Tengen Rabbit chip case because of Atari Games' unclean hands. Atari Games had defrauded the U.S. Copyright Office to obtain a copy of the 10NES source code. A similar post-DMCA case without the fraud, Lexmark v. Static Control Components, was decided in favor of interoperability.
Under the courts it is permissible. However it will not stop companies from trying to use the law again.
Summary judgment is available where are there are no material issues of fact, and it is cheaper than a trial.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 09 2016, @06:16PM
Lets try this
I know you *want* it to be perfectly legal and above board. I do too as I think it is very beneficial to everyone involved. The way DMCA is written currently though does not allow it. The courts have been eroding what the law says and there are some solid cases to allow it. But it would be better to fix the law.
Clear?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 09 2016, @06:36PM
No, it's still wrong.
(Score: 2) by bitstream on Wednesday March 09 2016, @11:21PM
There's one way to fix it. Use the same strategy that mplayer and some cryptos used in the 1990s. Have the source code site etc in a country with sane laws and then let developers work using that. And people don't have to reveal their real names.
(Score: 2) by Geotti on Friday March 11 2016, @03:05AM
Wow, this video of them REing the two chips is pretty interesting stuff! Thanks!