> MAME's License is a modified version of the standard BSD license. The primary modification is that we do not allow commercial distribution or use of MAME, in order to limit some of the obvious abuses of the code. Because of this modification, MAME's license does not fall under the definition of an Open Source (uppercase) license. This is one of the reasons you don't see the MAME source code hosted on sites such as SourceForge.
> Confusingly, MAME is often referred to as open source (lowercase), as its development shares much in common with other open source projects. However, in spite of its freely available source code, MAME may not be used in a commercial setting, as specified by its license.
That's stupid. Open Source has a meaning, which is the OSD: changing case doesn't alter that meaning. You can get source code for Windows 10 too (if you work at the right university) that doesn't mean Windows 10 is open source any more than old-MAME was.
Naturally, the license didn't stop some companies. This included purpose-built ARM-based arcade boards running MAME, to which MAMEDev responded in the most MAMEDev way possible: by cracking their encryption and adding them to MAME as bootleg sets [1].
[1] https://github.com/mamedev/mame/blob/master/src/mame/drivers...
I don't understand what you mean. Why is it bad to draw attention here?
> some contributors didn't want to see commercial MAME arcade cabinets
Why do you suppose that is? It's infuriating to see someone else make a lot of money with something you developed for free?
Surely the world would have been a better place if they allowed all commercial use. Someone would have put marketing money into MAME arcade cabinets, etc., and a lot more people would be using it and aware of it.
These are basically trivial now with Raspberry Pis, right?
The source was available. But it was neither open source nor free software. Now it is.
What do you mean? I haven't really looked too deep into the site, but the homepage and download pages at least don't really say anything that would give me that impression.
Sadly tho, I don't think that this was a gating issue at all for the companies :-(
Very nice job to the team at Mamedev tho! Congrats on what must have been a long and tiresome journey to get to this point!
If their goal is to prevent misuse of the project by unethical profit-minded entities, GPL3's anti-tivoization language would have ensured that even if a company profits from building or running a MAME-based cabinet (which is good!), they wouldn't be able to deprive their customers' freedom to fix or upgrade the software that runs it. (As they now can!)
It's even worse for the permissively-licensed parts of the code, which can now be used to build locked-down proprietary cabinets that users can't even inspect. I'm glad they got at least part of the project covered by copyleft.
The "common questions" on their site contains some confusing claims, too:
> Q. Can I include MAME with my product? > A. Yes. You can use 3-clause BSD compliant files but project as whole is under GPL-2.0 license so in case you wish to use those part you need approval from specific developers.
You'd only need permission if you didn't want to comply with the terms of GPL2. There's nothing in GPL2 that requires permission for inclusion with a product.
Maybe that's just leftover from before the license change?
Kudos to the team for sorting it out, and to all the old contributors who agreed to relicense their code where necessary.
You coax the blues right out of the horn, Mame,
You charm the husk right off of the corn, Mame,
You've got that banjoes strummin'
And plunkin' out a tune to beat the band,
The whole plantation's hummin'
Since you brought Dixie back to Dixie land.