"first ever"? You sure about that? I'd check up on Hanaho's PC cabinet before making that claim...
It isn't first ever. We're selling cabs in Australia with the same deal:
http://www.gamedude.com.au/arcade/MAMEDev released permissions to everyone who applied around April at the same time. Part of the agreement states that we MUST distribute custom-compiled versions of MAME that support only the licensed games. Anyone not doing that is breaking the rules, hence why the statement about the custom version.
We'll be adding a press release to our site with the agreement in detail shortly. But for now, cabs are already shipping with legal ROMs from StarRoms. I hope that all MAME-cabinet makers worldwide will do the same, as it will show the game manufacturers that there really is a legitimate and legal market for classic game ROMs, and that we're not all warez-kiddiez.
I am very curious about the terms, anyone know if the Mamedevs were compensated? If they are open to that, the could be the end of Foley's (*spit*) monopoly on legal cabs.
No. MAMEDev receive no money for this. Copyright permission issues do not need money to exchange hands for them to be legal or illegal. MAMEDev own the copyright on MAME, and are the only group who can give or take away permission for others to use it in a commercial product.
I can't speak for other cabinet makers, but we obviously don't charge extra for MAME. We sell our PC-based cabinets with GNU/Linux, XMAME, AdvanceMenu and the complete set of ROMs from StarRoms. We don't charge extra for any of the software nor "labor" on software. Likewise, the ROMs are licensed under the buyer's name directly, and we make no money from these, as per the agreement.
We also don't give the option to buy PC-based cabinets without ROMs. Some people might find this the wrong way to approach it, but I disagree. I think people need to start getting used to paying for legal media, and stop seeing MAME as a pirate's heaven forever more. Legal ROM licensing will occur en masse. It might take 5 years, it might take 1. But the more people start paying for what they use (and lets face it, the costs are not huge compared to the physical cabinet itself) the more we'll see legal ROMs appear for legal purchase, and that's a good thing.