Re: [GNU-linux-libre] MAME

[Jean Louis]

Hello,

It would be good to nicely understand the issues I have pointed to in
this discussion:
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2016-03/msg01213.html

and to seek legal advice by an attorney of FSF in regards to trademark
usage.

In regards to free software distribution guidelines, as written here:
http://www.gnu.org/distros/free-system-distribution-guidelines.html

I don't agree that MAME should be included, including many of other
emulators, in the free software distributions, for reasons above
explained in the discussion I have started.

Jean Louis

On Tue, Mar 29, 2016 at 11:08:56AM -0300, Felipe Sanches wrote:
> I can see good usages of the MAME codebase for documentation of the
> history of computer hardware. (I do it VERY often).
> 
> Or for running homebrew free implementations of games on the emulator
> (I already did that myself a couple times).
> 
> It seems like the source package is undisputably free, while the
> binary package is also free, but inducing users to download and run
> non-free ROMs.
> 
> That's also the case for any other free-software emulator, though. Any
> idea how we've dealt with this in cases such as dosbox, and other free
> software emulators?
> 
> On Tue, Mar 29, 2016 at 11:05 AM, Felipe Sanches <address@hidden> wrote:
> > The codebase is now fully free. But the vast majority of games
> > (perhaps all of them) require non-free ROMs. So this is a special case
> > that requires some thought.
> >
> > On Mon, Mar 28, 2016 at 8:57 PM,  <address@hidden> wrote:
> >> Hello
> >>
> >> The MAME project has recently re-licensed the project to GPL2 (with GPL3
> >> parts). It is now free software. http://mamedev.org/?p=422
> >>
> >> Please consider updating the entry here to reflect this, since it is now 
> >> out
> >> of date:
> >> https://libreplanet.org/wiki/List_of_software_that_does_not_respect_the_Free_System_Distribution_Guidelines#MAME
> >>
> >> Thank you!
> >>
>