While I think that isucamper puts forth an interesting posit, I think that it misses what, for me, is the germane issue -- these works are put together by people and those people have their own views as to how they feel when their works are "shared" and how they are "shared".
Jeff was, quite rightfully, pissed at how D2K came to be included in misfit MAME.
For me, the issues are very simple:
- Jeff is, and has been, a force for good in this hobby
- Will Jeff stop doing cool things as a result of what happened with D2K ?
If the answer is "Yes", then we, as a hobby, have lost and I, for one, dislike seeing people dismiss the feelings of those good folks (and, yes, I do the same exact thing to the MAMEDevs when I use an xx-in-1 board).
For me, it would be a similar issue to saint rolling up the tent because somebody did something to piss him off enough that he just didn't want to bother continuing putting out the effort and $$$ to support us as he has.
We have far too few resources in this hobby and the people who "put up" are often uncompensated and do it as a labour of love. Most often they do this at their own expense, be it monetary expense, time take away from family or other more immediately personal measures. Those who do charge for things often estill end up taking a "net loss", when you look at it.
Whenever we make decisions that benefit ourselves, whether it be to buy an xx-in-1 board, download ROMS, play D2K without paying, etc. there are consequences.
I don't think that the MAMEDevs are going to stop developing MAME simply because I buy a 48-in-1 to replace my vertical MAME box.
OTOH, I'm not convinced that Jeff is going to put forth as much effort as he has on coin-op projects.
I would gladly make a donation to the MAMEDevs for using a 48-in-1 and I suspect that there are those who would say the same thing about D2K (and some have).
It would be interesting to see how many of us actually would, if we had the opportunity.