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cant seem to grasp why mame is 'illegal' for commercial use

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jcterzin:

sounds like there is a ton of grey area here.

saint:


--- Quote from: jcterzin on February 02, 2010, 02:09:50 pm ---sounds like there is a ton of grey area here.

--- End quote ---

There is zero grey area here.

1. It's against the MAME-Dev license.
2. It's against the law.

RayB:

I guess what it boils down to is average folk dont understand what a "license" is. They are used to just installing and running programs and so long as they paid to get it, and it works, that's all that matters to them.

So to put it simply, when a person, or persons or a company creates a program, or a work of art, or a piece of music, etc, they automatically have copyright of that program. This gives them legal control over how/where their work is used. Traditionally this comes in the form of "If you pay me $X, you can use this for Y".

MAME creators decided they are not charging for MAME. It is free. But it is not a free-for-all. In exchange for $0, you can use it BUT NOT COMMERCIALLY. That's what they decided. End of story. It's their work, their rules.


Ginsu Victim:


--- Quote from: jcterzin on February 02, 2010, 02:09:50 pm ---sounds like there is a ton of grey area here.

--- End quote ---

Here's what you don't realize:

Haze is a MAME dev.

It's not like you're talking to someone unrelated to the project just giving their opinion.

J.Max:

This is very simple:

1. MAMEDev owns the code and trademark, in short, they own MAME.

2. They have the right to say what you can or can't do with their property.  "Open source" doesn't mean that no one owns the right to the intellectual property, it just means that anyone can contribute.  Google owns Android, and they say that you can't use it on Netbooks, therefore you can't do so. (I use this comparison because Android is also open source, I believe.)

3. They (MAMEDev) say that you can't use it commercially.

That's pretty much it in a nutshell.

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