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Making money from MAME
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Lilwolf:
Letter of the law...

I take it as soon as you mention MAME in an add... you are using it to make money... Using its name to sell your product... and at that point, its against the mame license.

BUT....

I think its acceptable..

BUT...

giving roms to non-friends because the bought a cabinet isn't really acceptable in my opinion...

but I can see giving them a CD / DVD with them is.

but..

all is really relative... and the big thing.

if you give roms in a cabinet that you sell... you shouldn't talk about it at all... it IS illegal... and I don't really want to know which on this board (especially the ones I think of as friends) are doing 'bad' things...

everyone here has probably obtained a copy of a rom they don't own the original... BAD!

but everyone here has probably supported each of those companies to the point that without people like us... they wouldn't have stayed in business...

all a wash imho... just keep it on the down low dudes
Tiger-Heli:

--- Quote from: Lilwolf on April 29, 2004, 08:39:03 am ---Letter of the law...
I take it as soon as you mention MAME in an add... you are using it to make money... Using its name to sell your product... and at that point, its against the mame license.
BUT....
I think its acceptable..

--- End quote ---
Not sure.  Actually the MAME license just states "MAME is free. Its source code is free. Selling either is not allowed."

If you have the source code installed in a cabinet, but you are throwing it in, and the actual price is the cabinet cost, it probably is a technical violation of the license.

If you have the cabinet running MAME and charge 25 cents to play a game, the MAME devs consider it a violation of the license, but it might be a pretty big stretch.

You are implying the Act-Labs and Ultimarc violate the MAME license by saying their products are MAME compatible, which increases their sales, which increases their profits, which amounts to selling MAME.  I think that's a pretty big stretch, but mayb not much bigger than the example above.

--- Quote ---giving roms to non-friends because the bought a cabinet isn't really acceptable in my opinion...
but I can see giving them a CD / DVD with them is.

--- End quote ---
I am hoping you meant giving a CD / DVD with them to friends is acceptable in your opinion.

If it's a non-friend buying a cabinet, I can't see that it matters whether I give him a DVD or if the ROMS are on the HD.

Personally, I don't think it's "acceptable from a legal standpoint" to give the ROMS to a friend, not that I'm saying I would'nt do this, or have any hard feelings with anyone else who does.

--- Quote ---but..

all is really relative... and the big thing.

all a wash imho... just keep it on the down low dudes

--- End quote ---
I agree with the rest of the comments in this post.  Best not to do it, and if you don't do that, best not to post it for all the world to see.
SirPeale:
Here goes.

Selling MAME is against their license.  In other words, I can not put MAME on a disc and sell that disc, IE selling the program.

Selling the ROM images is illegal, since you do not own the intelectual rights to those images.  It's up to the respective owners to persue that, if they want to or not.

Selling arcade items branded as Mame compatible is NOT against the license of Mame.  All the license for Mame covers is the software.  Hardware that works with it?  Not a consideration towards that license.

That's it, cut and dried.
patrickl:
If you sell a CD/DVD and charge only for reproduction costs that is generally considered "free distribution" of the executable. All GNU stuff is distributed that way (They charge up to $200 for a red hat distribution these days)

Along those lines, if you distribute MAME (for free) on a cab (which you sell) you should be fine. I can't see anywhere in the license that you can't accompany it with a sold product. Just that you can;t charge for MAME itself.

The only thing you are not allowed to do, is to distribute ROM images along with MAME, but if people here start complaining about that  .... well ...

I can't figure out don't see why people are bothered about this so much. I think those cabs look good and he doesn't seem to be scamming people like many of the "buy a trashed cab, slap in a trashed PC and auction it" ebay sellers.
Stingray:

--- Quote from: patrickl on April 29, 2004, 12:48:00 pm ---I can't figure out don't see why people are bothered about this so much. I think those cabs look good and he doesn't seem to be scamming people like many of the "buy a trashed cab, slap in a trashed PC and auction it" ebay sellers.


--- End quote ---

My thoughts exactly. He seems to be selling a quality product. People are willing to buy said product. What's the big deal?

-S
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