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saint:
MAME is now Free and Open Source Software
From the MAME website:
04 Mar 2016
After 19 years, MAME 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.
If you have contributed to the MAME source code and believe we have not contacted you, please reach out to us at our contact page.
Please note that MAME is a registered trademark of Nicola Salmoria, and permission is required to use the "MAME" name, logo or wordmark.
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http://mamedev.org/?p=422
Slippyblade:
So what are the practical effects of this? I'm totally confused when it comes to licensing issues.
lilshawn:
it's not the licencing... it's the fact that now the source code that makes MAME...well...MAME, is freely available and anyone can download it and make their own derived works from it.
Slippyblade:
Oh, got it. I'd thought it was open already. I Never had the urge to poke at the code since I'm barely an intermediate coder.
ark_ader:
--- Quote from: lilshawn on March 04, 2016, 05:48:13 pm ---it's not the licencing... it's the fact that now the source code that makes MAME...well...MAME, is freely available and anyone can download it and make their own derived works from it.
--- End quote ---
Well haven't people been doing derived works since the project began? There are more forks than knives at the mamedev dinner table. What about all that encryption they had to break in order to get the platforms working? Is that all code public domain now? Someone better tell Sony, Sega, Nintendoh, etc. :laugh2:
IF they are not preservers of history, how does this sit with the DMCA and the grey area they have been playing in
One thing is certain. I can get the code now, change it, rename it, and call it my own and use it commercially. (With due references to the contributors)
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