Look at me, I, I mean WE are a real company!

[1UP]

Um, 1Up, since you are concerned with MAME Dev's wishes, can't you find an alternate emulator that will play classic games that you can get from starroms (or whatever)?  I'm sure MAME isn't the only emu out there that plays old games.

Well, right now it's about the only classic arcade emu that is still being developed.  Mame Roms are constantly being updated, so I don't know if other emus would be able to use those.  If I use things like Zinc or Modeler, those roms aren't available commercially, so that's not an option.

What I may do eventually is have a proprietary emulator coded for my cabs, but that is way down the road.  I would need to get licenses for a lot of games to make it worthwhile.  It sucks that I have to do that, since there is already a perfectly good emulator, but the Mamedevs just don't want it "soiled" with money.

[D_Zoot]

1UP,

I've just re-read mame.txt and it's pretty straight forward.  It says you cannot use it in commercial products, but you can distribute it freely.  What it doesn't say is that if you distribute it freely you HAVE to distibute it freely to anybody that asks.  It also doesn't say you can't distribute it if you also sell commercial products. So:

Consider this.  In your advertisements, website or what-have-you...  

"Buy now and I (or "we" depending on the outcome of the original topic   ) can, on request,  include a free cd containing a copy of the free arcade emulator MAME!"  

You can obtain free software on the net to build your own autorun cd's.  Make sure the mame package on the cd is complete with binary and source code and un-altered.  Make sure there's nothing commercial on the same cd.  Keep any mame distributions seperate from any roms of any kind.

Make reference or link back to the mame.net website every time you mention mame so there is no question you aren't misrepresenting anything.

Make sure it's obvious that your products costs the same with or without a mame cd,  that way it could not be considered you are making any profit from it or that it is an intergral part of your commercial offerings.

Provide a link to download mame on your website, or better yet, if your bandwidth allows, host the mame package on your website for "free" download. The dev's encourage free distribution and this would further that cause.

I suspect this would cover your bases in keeping with the spirit and intentions of the mame dev team while providing a reasonable solution to your customers.  But, I'm not on the dev team and I'm no EULA lawyer, so maybe not..    

My 2 cents...
D