not sure if its the case here... but a few virus scanners used to tag a lot of apps compiled with some free compilers since a lot of viruses are compiled with them also (the scanners looks for chunks of code that look the same as known viruses).
Anyway, mame got tagged with it also a few years ago, but it was a mistake with the virus scan application.
(not saying you shouldn't update your virus scan app, and be careful, but they are known for false positives before you start accusing the author.)