John's Arcade Forum - Classic Arcade and Pinball Collecting and Restoring Discussion Forum - RETRO MAME - Nintendo Vs Forum

Isn't it amazing how far MAME has come since its humble beginnings in 1997?  I remember discovering MAME early on, when it only supported about 5 games, by the end of the first year it supported over 300.  I remember when most of the games had the wrong colors and no sound, and how exciting it was when they were corrected.  I remember downloading new releases of MAME several times a month, and tracking the progress of MAME very closely.  Now of course, thousands of games are supported, and I have never seen most of them!   I appreciate all the effort put in to the MAME project.  I would like to thank Nicola Salmoria for getting the project started.  MAME plays a huge role in preserving arcade history,  especially for those much younger than myself, and those who live in countries that did not experience the arcade phenomenon that the USA did.   


http://www.mamedev.org/mame_chart_0128.png

You know something, I might try to get a cabinet for MAME.

I know a lot of people hate the giant control panel with a crap load of buttons but my friend has a two player panel with a track ball and spinner and it really is one of the best things in his entire arcade. He has a ton of great games like food fight and spyhunter but being able to play major havoc on a trackball or tempest with a real spinner is really great without having those machines available.

for end users, mame is great, I love it.

if your a software dev, the mame dev teram fuckers are evil cunts. Moving Mame from its open source free license to a closed Commercial License, fucking other devs over re-licensing code they dont have the rights to re-license, etc. yeah, fuck them.

As a daily Linux user, believer in Open Source and the Free Software Foundation, apparently I need to do more research into this issue to understand the developers point of view.
From the comment above, the problem with the MAME license is: "redistributions may not be sold, nor may they be used in a commercial product or activity".

Therefore, companies like JammaBoards.com are not legally entitled to sell the 60 in 1 board if it contains MAME, or I am not legally entitled to sell MAME DVD's on Craigslist?
That seems to me like a small price to pay compared to the positive effect MAME has had on preserving arcade history.  But neither I nor JammaBoards can be considered a developer.

I wonder if the MAME team chose to modify the license because of the copyright issue on the ROMS, maybe they thought they had a better case if profit was taken out of the equation?
Or, did the MAME team change the license after developers contributed to the code base in good faith, in order to sell the package to Google?  If that's the case then they are evil cunts.

this. lots of devs submitted code under old license. mame dev team just relicensed stuff unilaterally, and stripped licenses off patches and stuff and put a new commercial license on it, even when original developers did not agree to it!

worse, everyone else in OSS world ignored whats going on. google 'mame going commercial'. best threads were by Haze, but he has since hidden his posts and given up on the subject.

ok, then i agree with you.

+1

MAMEdevs, Sigh...... some of these guys act like gods, and they want to control everything about it, even outside the project itself.

just one example, I remember a few years ago a developer made a simple coin interface to use with front ends, for users with working coin doors, well they jumped all over him for it saying it could be used commercially, it never was very reliable, and he didn't modify Mame, he just made a separate program, but he took it down anyway.

well, not long after you had Chinese manufacturers selling these little gadgets http://www.arcadespareparts.com/arcade_parts/other/arcade_timer_board/13170.html (http://www.arcadespareparts.com/arcade_parts/other/arcade_timer_board/13170.html) (just as an example, not endorsing the product or place) which is a more reliable hardware solution that bypasses software altogether and really does allow commercial use of the MAME program on a PC when combined with a jamma fingerboard or Jpac so, what did jumping on that guy accomplish exactly?

Then you have the attitudes of some devs involved, kicking other developers off the project and taking their work, claiming it as their own and re-licensing the code at will, as mentioned earlier.

You also have some of the PCB board dumpers involved with the team allegedly hiding away rom images and code for prototypes that only they own (from donations or paid for with donated money) to keep them scarce and value high so they can sell them later for future profit, not preservation

So, you see there is a lot of shady stuff going on all around.


But, that out of the way, I love what the MAME program itself has done over the years, and I adore my emulation cabinet, the program probably is responsible for getting me into this hobby, I started using it at during the 0.32b build.