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the state of mame

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shateredsoul:

--- Quote from: YoMama1 on December 16, 2010, 03:58:49 pm ---
--- Quote from: Haze on December 16, 2010, 03:18:30 pm ---
The only real restriction beyond the license on which it's based is that it can't be used for commercial purposes.

The dev team simply don't want somebody bundling it up and selling it (and at the end of the day, that's better for everybody...

--- End quote ---

This restriction is pretty huge, and I think it is quite a turnoff for potential developers.  In general people like to get paid for work.  That's what this comes down to, right?

People cannot port mame to be used in an iPad app.  This would be totally legit.

I can't use MAME at a school fundraiser without feeling bad (I understand the ROM issue, let's put that aside for now).

--- End quote ---

I don't think you would find any emulator developer who would agree with you. Plus, people are porting mame.. what you talking about? It'x on xbox, dingoo, psp, and other platforms.

Crazy Cooter:
I don't see that as being a restriction at all.  MAME has always been free and built by people that were/are willing to give up their time freely so you and I can play games.  If they commercialized it at this point, someone would be profiting on all those hours from all those people.  That was never the intent.  This is a free program coded by generous people and it's come to the point where some vocal individuals have discouraged the team.  Instead of bitching about what has/has not been done, people should instead be saying thank you for the progress so far.  IMHO, MAME should go underground and stop releasing to the public.  Then you'll see all sorts of people wanting to get involved.

Haze:
As I've said elsewhere

a) 90% of the work is the reverse engineering.  It can take months, sometimes even years and cost a great deal of money in figuring out.
b) The code that is a result of that can take 5-10 minutes to write*

MAME is giving you a) for free
MAME is saying, you can use b) however you want, just not for commercial purposes.

If working on an actual commercial project you should be pushing for the original manufacturer to give you a) (because an original reference manual / material is better than MAME or at least would complement it)
in which case you wouldn't be using b) anyway

However, MAME makes a) available for free, despite it being 90% of the work, because obviously in some cases the original material simply isn't available and we don't want to hinder people, nor would it even seem fair to try and claim ownership over facts we discovered.

Do you really want to see all ports released on consoles etc. as 0 effort straight ports of the exact code in MAME, bugs and all, because it was cheaper and easier?  Asking people to do their own implementations at least makes them think about what they're doing rather than rushed, buggy direct ports which aren't optimized for the target hardware at all.

In the case of iPad apps, many OSS licenses are incompatible anyway.  Any that requires the source release is incompatible, which is a key part of most of them, and an important part of MAME.  This isn't a restriction, this is about keeping the project open, and unrestricted.  Do you want DRM laden versions of MAME, tied to a single platform, which only run specific ROMs?  Of course not, it's an open _unrestricted_ project.

As for MAME at charity events, you say you don't care much about the ROM issue, but in a public place that should be just as much of a concern.


* this is why support for games in other projects often appears so quickly after MAME has emulated them, the team have done the hard work, the implementation is trivial.

RayB:
Haze, the key to getting things done and not getting demotivated by the great unwashed masses (wait, what? unwashed? How about uninformed and impatient masses) is to stay off the forums.  Don't read the nonsense. People can be vocal but they don't always represent reality.

Haze:

--- Quote from: RayB on December 16, 2010, 05:06:04 pm ---Haze, the key to getting things done and not getting demotivated by the great unwashed masses (wait, what? unwashed? How about uninformed and impatient masses) is to stay off the forums.  Don't read the nonsense. People can be vocal but they don't always represent reality.


--- End quote ---

That kinda goes against my principals of keeping people informed about the project and goings on (which in turn, can help get them involved)

It's the only angle on which I can agree that MameDev sometimes seem elitist, like they feel they don't have to talk to people, explain things, or help people understand what's really going on.  I try my best to make sure that isn't the case, and that (as long as people don't ask the same question over and over, expecting the answer to change) good, informative answers are given, that help people understand how things work.

Right now the only 'official' way to contact MAMEdev is through a simple form on the homepage, you have no real knowledge of who is going to read what you've said, when they're going to read it, or if it's even the right type of thing to post.  Likewise even if you do get a reply, nobody else benefits from it.  Public discussion is there for anybody else to read, and learn from, which can be both interesting, and benefit the project as a whole.

I find the current system to be very cold, and almost makes the team seem unapproachable, and distant.  When you're trying to find new contributors, that isn't always beneficial.

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