[Dev] Fwd: Re: [GNU-linux-libre] MAME

[Isaac David]

For your information, the recent MAME situation has spawned a
discussion regarding free emulators for nonfree ROMS and the
role of free distros with respect to those packages. I think
this currently is an ethically gray area that concerns Parabola
too. Jump in if you want to voice your opinions:

https://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/gnu-linux-libre/2016-03/msg00008.html


---------- Message transféré ----------

De : Jean Louis <guix at rcdrun.com>
Objet : Re: [GNU-linux-libre] MAME
Date : Tue, 29 Mar 2016 16:12:34 +0200
À : Workgroup for fully free GNU/Linux distributions 
<gnu-linux-libre at nongnu.org>

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 
> <juca at members.fsf.org> 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,  <rain1 at openmailbox.org> 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!
>  >>
>