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"MAMEdev are *aggressively* trying to move to a commercial license" What???
Locke141:
I would imagine that they would drop it, or at least be more amenable, if there was a credible threat of a lawsuit. Maybe some of the the developers who don't want the changes could start an indiegogo campaign. A MAME developers rights legal defense fund if you will. I would imagine it would also bring a lot of unwanted negative attention to the three DEV's who want to change the license.
The devs could probably find a copy right lawyer to sign onto the project just for the publicity alone. It would be a good deal for them, if the campaign hits there goal he/she would get payed if not they would still get free publicity. There are a literally thousands of lawyers who can't find jobs right now. It would not take a great high price lawyer, more like a Saul Goodman, to make the point. Just the credible threat of a class action lawsuit would probably bring them around to negotiate.
ark_ader:
First off Kudos to Aaron and the current development team for finally listening my constant suggestions ( in various forums) for a licensing change and start the process to change the license for eventual commercial use. :applaud:
The new licensing would aid the current developers in two separate ways. Their code can be used in furthering commercial projects, and dodge the legal bullet that can be fired from any copyright holder. Also when the time comes, the code can be submitted to the Library of Congress, and fulfilling the archiving role than the "arcade ROM Player" as it is commonly associated today.
The second benefit helps the developers to create an arm of technical support which can feed new archiving projects, without resorting to the questionable methods employed in the past. This technical arm would be a great way to liaison with organizations that may have copyright ownership (opening up doors of communication to resources), or to assist larger companies like Nintendoh or Sega for their nostalgic reboot programs.
The "Owner" of MAME could be construed as the one(s) who coded MAME, which can be traced and linked to the project. The MAME domain name was linked to an address in So. California (last time I checked) so whoever owns the domain name and can demonstrate that they worked on the project could have legal rights to the entire code base and IP.
It is all fine and good for Haze to object it, but he doesn't helm the project any more. I do think he has a say in the licensing change as he was a major contributor for many years but had fallen out of favour. The MESS team would definitely see some benefit, and existing emulation code could be easier to obtain and assimilate.
I think it is the way to go, and it will change MAME in a positive way, and become more beneficial for the community and kindred intellects that are focused on the preservation side, rather than metamorphosing into some muddled legal and technical mess that would eventually kill the project.
Anyone will be able to take a fork of MAME and make some money supporting it. I bet Digital Leisure would make some cash out of those tired IPs yet again. :lol
DHTech:
How can you licence something commercially that essentially runs illegal roms, I might have the complete wrong end of the stick here, but I assume they're looking to charge for Mame, that would mean charging for something that only has a few legal roms, which in all honesty aren't even worth loading.
rpgposer:
It's a corporate takeover. The death of mame as a cooperative group project to which anyone could contribute. Fight the good fight, Haze.
JoeB:
I think what this boils down to is advantage/disadvantage to end users vs developers. I can understand the disadvantages to developers (from a philosophical point of view) but am hard pressed to find any for end users.
From end users point of view, switching to pure gpl will allow mame to be distributed with all commercially supported as well as pure free Linux distros (I don't believe one can apt get mame in Debian or red hat today for example). Makes it easier for end users to maintain their system (auto update anyone?)
While it does open the door for samples and prerecorded footages in game play as hacks (which goes against mame charter) it will make games for end users more playable (for example, isn't this how daphne works? How long has there been a dragons lair support in mame but totally not usable) I think a majority of end users will choose playability with hacks vs not playable but documents the CPU perfectly.