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MAME To Become GPL?
BigJimSlade writes "The 'What's New' file for the latest release of the Multi Arcade Machine Emulator (or MAME, as it is more affectionately known) states that the developers/maintainers are considering re-licensing the not-so-open source code under the GPL/LGPL. Currently the source is under a slightly restrictive licence that prevents modifications to certain areas of code from being redistributed. (L)GPL source for this project would be quite a boon for devlopers, who could reuse the CPU cores and other key components in other OSS projects."
Congrats Tim!
I don't think many people ever gave much thought to the licensing of MAME itself. I mean, it's nice that it's possibly joining the ranks of the open source movement, but the whole licensing and legality of the rom images I think is a far more restrictive dilemma...
Now if the games themselves were being made GPL, now that would be some great news!
In the Portland, Ore area and like card games? Check out: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/portlandgames/
Just a thought.
It's a good idea. MAME has been plagued by controversy over the last year, fighting accusations of rom hoarding and rejecting game simulations (such as Pong). This will allow development to become more democratic and refocus unofficial development into a single version.
Have you beat Algernon through the maze yet?
It's nice that MAME is going open-source, but the code has been there to steal all along. There were parts to which modification was illegal, but plenty of developers went ahead and did just that, forking their own versions. Maybe now the version forks can be reintegrated into the MAME mother tree.
(I don't remember the names of these forks but a Google search should pick a few up)
Cretin - a powerful and flexible CD reencoder
Oddly enough, I was just asking a video game repair guy if he'd seen a "Mr. Do" game recently. It took a while for him to remember it, but all us children of the '80s have these games buried in our subconcious, somewhere. ... so thanks to Slashdot, I now know where to find Mr. Do info! One of those searches you just wouldn't think to "do" without a little reminder. Thanks again, y'all...
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
With mame acting as a pretty much universal hardware platform these days, has anyone made their own mame roms yet?
Maybe this will spur on open source gaming a bit.
interesting...wasn't there a post about this before though?
I tihnk it's great that MAME has finally gone Open Source, but another poster made a far more important point, IMO. The ROM liscensing. As far as I know, ROM's are only legal to have if you own the game (either the cartridge or the cabinet).
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
The developers were able to add back the gambling type (fruit machines, blackjack, poker, etc.) games. I think the main reason for the source not being under the GPL was because of a) Nicola not liking the gambling games and b) The fear that the newer and still for sale Capcom, NeoGeo, and other roms may be added by someone causing pircay of new software. I do agree with not adding in current games that are still making money for their copyright holders. The crime of owning ROM images you do not own is still just as illegal regardless of their age unless the copyright has expired. I think the intentions of not emulating newer games was to help MAME "fly under the radar" of the IDSA. As for the non-emulation of gambling type arcade games...well...it's a shame that someone would STOP others from adding that to the source.
"The strong will do what they want, the weak will do what they must."
-Thucydides
..GNU/MAME ?
Trolling is a art,
Was there any reason why it was started with the other license scheme? Are there any unique reasons why it should not be GPL'd?
Please don't ever post here again. Your comments are inane and not needed. Bye.
Sincerely,
Opera Winfreed
Most people who play emulated games do not have the actual game (whether it be cartidge, cabinet or disk) that they have the ROM for. If I had an arcade machine for Zaxxon, I don't see any reason to download an emulated version. Keep the coin box open and toss a quarter in when you want to play. Hell, use the same quarter over and over. Emulators don't really make much sense to me.. the "legal licensing" of the ROMs anyway..
But what if you can't find the cartridge or what if it was never on a cartridge? Some ROM's came from consoles right? So how would you license one of those? I think there needs to be a consolidated effort to petition the companies who own the rights to the games in question and beg/plead/threaten/nag/etc until they release their games under the GPL or some other license that would allow us to play them without having to keep an eye out for "the man".
How is it that one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box to start a campfire?
MAME was free software, but only free as in beer. It wasn't free as in speech. The change to (L)GPL would make it free software.
Sorry about the anonymous post. When I try to make a subtle point, I always get "-1 overrated" by people who don't read carefully. I don't know why I let the bother me, since I still gain unneeded karma.
6. ???
7. Profit
try here
Copyright is a figment of a greed-crazed imagination.
If these companies don't want to maintain their former product, they shouldn't cry when someone else picks it out of the trashbin and makes something of it.
Silly Asses.
Seriously, no one cares about GPL. I mean, there's like, what? 50 people who read Slashdot! And at any given time 20% roughly are first-posters! So what does this mean? The normal people in the world don't like your kind, or your crazy ideas like GPL or whatever. Just stick to what you do best and stay in your parents basement.
Damn, that was a lame try. You need to be a bit more clever.
With the death of mame.dk, mame is effectively worthless. Don't kid yourself, Mame was purpose-built to steal roms from now-defunct and antiquated machines. If only there was a standard for running games on multiple platforms, oh yeah... Java.
The biggest trick the devil pulled was letting lawyers become politicians so they can write the laws.
I'm not a gamer at all, so the product really means very little to me, however, I wonder if releasing MAME as a GPL product will help ensure the life of the product if one of the game manufacturers were to have the core group shut down because of some DMCA-type infringement.
Since they are planning it now, I was wondering if there were reasons they had avoided it up until now.
Other posts suggest that they were trying to restrict the introduction of a) gambling software and b) code that would allow the pirating of current arcade games. They further suggest that this was done to avoid legal complications on this program. This all begs the question: what has changed that they feel comfortable GPL'ing it now?
If versions 0.22 through 0.26 were under the GPL, why was it removed from under the GPL for versions 0.27 through 0.61?
Ha. At least you were not programming the Great Patriotic Game, comrade. How many "L" shapes can you program in Fortran before time and space is becomink meaningless.
Ecconomics didn't bring down the Soviet state, the dancing cossacks when you compleatink level5 did.
"Prediction: within 10 years, Windows will be a Linux distribution." Me, 7-6-2016
... then the terrorists have already won!
Hah! You never heard of a software package spontaneously converting from GPL to the revered and exalted Windows EULA, have you? Proof that Windows is NOT viral, cancerous, or Pac-Man, and is therefore infinitely superior! So There, GPL weenies!
Now I will prove which cup contains the Iocaine powder! [sip] Bwahahahahaha! Bwahahahahaha! Erk...
"The only good windmill is a tilted windmill."
It's really no different than the various bootleg games that appeared throuought the 80's like Galaga being rewritten to run on different hardware.
Actually, there is a big difference between porting an existing game to run on different arcade hardware and writing an original game on arcade hardware. A port of Galaga to (say) the Vs. Super Mario Bros. hardware can be done only with Namco's permission because Namco owns the copyright on the sprites and the trademark on the word "GALAGA"; on the other hand, writing a generic vertical shooter to run on the Vs. Super Mario Bros. hardware shouldn't be a problem under copyright law.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Thank you very much. But assuming all of that is the case, we're left with the big puzzler: what has changed so that they suddenly feel comfortable re-releasing it under the GPL/LGPL?
I don't know about arcarde ROMs, but all console games come with a license that says that you cannot make any copies of the game, including for back-up purposes. So even if you own the game, it might now be legal to emulate on the computer.
See here for Nintendo's policy.
Or try a google search for emulation legal
The developers were able to add back the gambling type (fruit machines, blackjack, poker, etc.) games.
If the MAME developers are so strictly against "fruit machine" type games, then they should remove support for the Vs. Unisystem and PlayChoice 10 platforms (arcade platforms based closely on NES hardware), as the Vs. and PC10 versions of Super Mario Bros. 2 has a "fruit machine" at the end of every level, and the arcade versions of Super Mario Bros. 3 have a "fruit machine" in the Ace of Spades space on world maps.
The crime of owning ROM images you do not own is still just as illegal
Yes, distributing copies of ROM images over the Internet is copyright infringement. But is it also against the law to write your own software that runs on arcade hardware platforms? It seems all you'd need is a cross-assembler.
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I just can't use my SideWinder or Gravis gamepad and get the same feel as playing with my SNES controller.
So plug a PlayStation or N64 pad into your computer and get the authentic console feel. There exist USB adapters for many consoles' controllers.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Nintendo claims that all emulators and ROMs are illegal and sends cease and desist letters to sites like CrackerJap just for mentioning Pokémon in their meta tags. Their statements about the laws of various countries are self-serving bullshit, not the word of a lawyer or a judge.
Also, I could be wrong, but I do not remember any court case that has tested the legality of the "licenses" in console video game manuals. Hell, EULAs haven't even been thoroughly tested in court yet!
Actually MAME emulates Arcade machines, so while some of the games are on cartridge (Neo-Geo and a few of the newer systems), most are on boards and have to be dumped from the chips. The idea was that if a collector has the board (and there are many of us out there) we should be allowed to archive the ROMS because we all know that hardware and eeproms don't last forever.
The boards can be had quite commonly now on eBay (of course) and through various other collector sites. MAME also is great in that us collectors don't have to keep an entire warehouse of cabinets to play the games we own the boards for. For a list of classic arcade collectors you can check out http://www.vaps.org
I think you'll find that's because you're speaking American, not English...
Even if the company doesn't exist anymore, SOMEBODY probably still has the rights to the software.
If the game's publisher has been out of business for more than ten years, and the publisher was not bought by IDSA, it's pretty safe to assume that whoever owns the game's copyright doesn't even know he owns it. The chance of the copyright owner actually finding out about your piracy and taking action are about the same as the chance of a software patent holder doing the same on a random original program.
Just look at "Zero Wing", an old arcade game. Toaplan, its publisher, has been out of business for a long time. Had the company who bought Toaplan's copyrights known about the song and music video that sampled parts of "Zero Wing", then we probably would have seen legal sparks fly a couple months into the "All Your Base" craze. But we didn't.
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On the GPL, in both laymen terms, in it's entirety and the story behind it?
Only a few things mame devs didn;t like getting out.
BTW, what is everyone complaining aobut licensing ROMs. GPLing mame doesn't do that.
there are legal ROMs out there. There are also ones that are technically illegal but the manufacturer said they won't enforce the copyright. Capcom said if the game is over 3 years old they don't have a big issue about it. Also you can buy, legally, midway and williams games on CD.
And finally people who insist on running exclusively Free Software on their computer.
To my knowledge, very few programs designed for arcade platforms have been published as free software. It's not like the situation on the Game Boy Advance, where a ROM, compiler, and emulator are all under the GPL.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Nintendo may say whatever damn they please about the evils of emulation, but the law (at least in most of the places) still allows people to make backups and emulating the systems.
One shouldn't believe everything the companies say...
You do have the right to play the rom from a cartridge you own on your computer. I was feeling kind of dirty because I spent a week(yes, a week... It was a single 735MB zip file containing two nero image files and a cracked gta3.exe) downloading GTA3 for PC off of FastTrack. Then it occurred to me that I SHOULD be able to play the PC version, as it is essentially (but not literally) the same intellectual property as the PS2 game, which I own (or have purchased the right to play). The only reason I spent the time downloading it is because of the growing gta3 mod community; something you can not take advantage of on the PS2. BTW, it works beautifully and the mods, for the most part, are super sweet.
So, am I right? If I'm not right, than do the people who own those old cartridges really have the right to play the roms in mame?
put the what in the where?
all console games come with a license that says that you cannot make any copies of the game, including for back-up purposes.
In the United States, the backup law (17 USC 117) gives the owner of a copy the right to make those copies and adaptations necessary to run a program. The Betamax and Diamond Rio precedents give the owner of a copy the right to time-, space-, and format-shift a copyrighted work. And no, I did not see the "EULA" printed in the manual before I handed over the cash at Best Buy, so I don't think it's all that enforceable in a court of law.
See here for Nintendo's policy.
That's a publisher's official line, and it includes no citations of any court cases that support the company's position.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Try reading the actual USC sometime.
Does Title 17, United States Code, contain any provision for "squatters' rights" to the redistribution of out-of-print copyrighted works? If so, in what section?
Will I retire or break 10K?
At least you were not programming the Great Patriotic Game, comrade.
Would that be TOD for the Game Boy Advance? You know, where tetraminoes fall from the sky, and you have to move and spin them to make 4x4 block squares and complete horizontal lines before you overdose?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Though the philosophies behind "open source" and "free software" are divergent, a piece of software that is open source is almost always free software (the only difference is on the margins, where OSI accepts a couple of more onerous licenses than RMS is prepared to).
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
A couple years ago, a bunch of NeXT cube users offered to pay the full retail price for the current WP8 for a copy WordPerfect for NeXTSTEP, but they were declined. Told that while they still owned the rights, they weren't interested in selling them, and reminded these folks that they couldn't let them give it away either.
So WordPerfect forcibly removed a work from print and provided no reasonable timescale for the product's reintroduction to print? Let me add WordPerfect to my boycott list. There is no escape from the kind of badwill that such actions bring to a company's name. At least Disney re-releases its old movies every 10 years.
Will I retire or break 10K?
What about compatibility ? Using xmame, can I use any ROM or do they have to be a certain version ?
Like, can I use 0.5x and 0.61 f.e. ROMS or just a specific version fpr a specific xmame ?
It'll be bad news for the video game companies if MAME is re-released under the GPL. Loading a video game ROM into MAME is just like linking, and since the GPL is viral...
Woo hoo! Cough up the Pac Man sources, Namco!
(Heh.)
Taking legal advice on ROM use from Nintendo would be about as ridiculous as taking it from Slashdot. In fact worse; it's at least conceivable that someone on Slashdot might not be pushing their own self-serving agenda, just don't count on it. Seriously, how stupid would someone have to be to rely on Nintendo's opinion on something like that?
Spoken like a drudge.
You should look for work as a sysadmin. It suits you.
Geez. Now we know the "N" really stands for Nazi!
Criminal Infringement
Looks different to me.Sure, I like playing on the original equipment from time to time, but I'd rather play an emulator than take an hour to unpack all the old stuff, untangle it, unhook the current console, hook up the old stuff, then reverse the process after I get tired of Yar's Revenge in 15 minutes. Obviously, YMMV.
-sk
BTW, if you're curious, what makes the difference between video games and gambling games for us is whether skill can make a difference. In gambling games, all is decided by the return ratio the operator set in the configuration
Not for blackjack. Blackjack is a balance between skill and chance, just like Tetris (which MAME currently emulates). A player who know what he doing can beat the dealer pretty reliably in four-deck blackjack.
Outside the realm of coin-op games, is "Casino Kid" a video game?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Maybe if the copyright owners offered it for sale it would have value, but if it's just forgotten then they lose nothing by people "pirating" it.
Furthermore, it is a legal grey area because no court has ruled on its legality. Only a court can determine if a crime has taken place or not. YANAJ (You Are Not A Judge) so your interpretation of copyright law is irrelevant. Now you may be correct in predicting that a judge would rule against a defendant using an abandonware defense, but it's more likely that the judge will try to avoid ruling on abandonware, and justify his ruling based on other facts of the hypothetical case.
Maybe we'll see a bootable mame cd.
;)
I would love to take a mame cd, boot the machine from it, and run my roms off of the hard disk. It's certainly nicer than having to run the app from within whatever OS.
Yeah I know there have been some projects to do this but they've been flaky at best. I'd love for someone to prove me wrong on this though.
If you get an error, type "OVERRIDE" or "SECURITY OVERRIDE" and then try the optimize command again.
well, Bleem won against Sony. Score one for the good guys.
gambling isn;t in mame because how would it do the payout? :)
Hypothetical:
It would open another game and insert coins automatically. Thus, you earn credits in Virtual Blackjack and spend them in Zero Wing, Pac-Man, etc.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I own a sit down Star Trek - Strategic Operation Simulator. The game is in working order (but needs some work on the monitor). As an owner of the original ROMs, I consider MAME to be my Fair Use backup. I am legally using the ROMs for that game.
Loading a video game ROM into MAME is just like linking
I wouldn't be so sure. MAME is an interpreter. According to the GPL FAQ, the interpreted program is just data, and loading data into a program usually does not count as linking.
Will I retire or break 10K?
One of the reasons for our own license a long time ago was to deter those who wanted to make a quick buck from selling MAME (together with illegal ROMs). It worked reasonably well - the presence of this deterrent was enough to prevent at least some of them. Even though the reality is that selling the ROMs is illegal, moving back to GPL would open us to that sort of abuse again. You must have seen the banners and popups advertising DVD to CD copy programs for a low price of $49,95 - guess what, they are nothing but GPL'd software (MPEG-2 decoders and MPEG-4 encoders) slapped on a CD. Moreover, in the case of legal trouble, it would be easier to target the original authors than those who are redistributing the illegal material. In short:
Step 1. GPL MAME
Step 2. ?
Step 3. Profit!
;-)
The legal uses of MAME (together with legal ROMs) have been explicitly allowed previously (see the Capcom Classics CD), and it has been made clear that MAME itself isn't for sale, rather just a license for the game ROMs and a free copy of MAME on top.
Of course, we've had a fair share of problems because nobody is willing to try to enforce our current license on the most visible license violators, who currently do not redistribute the full source code changes: MAME32K (Kaillera) and the other MAME32 (not to be confused with the "right" MAME32). GPL would probably help here to force the source changes open, or to end the development of these particular derivative works. GPL would also allow us to re-use some non-critical code from other GPL'd projects, but personally I don't see this as a big advantage. Everything can be rewritten anyway.
In any case, even if MAME were to move to GPL, I don't think the development model would change much. Due to the dubious nature of ROMs, the developer mailing list and archive simply can not be public. A public CVS server would also be quite unlikely due to the support and maintainance nightmare. There haven't been any significant forks (unlike somebody mentioned here - changing one or two lines to remove the OK screen isn't forking) nor are we currently forbidding them - and I don't think GPL would change this situation.
Oh, and if you're wondering, mame.net is handling the Slashdot effect just fine. In fact, we've served even bigger audiences successfully. Moderators should frown any attempts of gaining karma through cut'n'pasting text from mame.net
Windows users should rejoice then, for this is one "virus" that Microsoft systems are never likely to catch. After all, who would want the cost of such systems to suddenly spiral down and... hey, wait a minute!!
Only the Neo-Marxist Open Soars movement would thnik such a thing.
With the death of mame.dk, mame is effectively worthless. [...] If only there was a standard for running games on multiple platforms, oh yeah... Java.
You'll find a lot of mame games in alt.binaries.emulators.mame and then there's always Kazaa or whatever favorite P2P you're using...
And as for the MAME Java client... Here it is.
They are both illegal. If that was the definition of the class that he put the two of the crimes in, then he was not incorrect at all.
There is no difference except the actual charge and subsequent penalty you get. The are both crimes. They are the same, no different.
I spout off about Cornell's law library also, but I can read it first.
Just because there are different gradations of a crime doesn't mean they are different crimes.
So there is no difference, and in your exhuberance to point out how ignorant someone else might be, made it painfully obvious that you yourself, by your inability to grasp the concept of many grades of the same crime, are quite ignorant.
Now for the simple math. If I distribute 1 ROM image to ten people, and they distribute it to ten people, and the ROM itself was $10, then you are guilty of the same crime as if it was worth $50000. The limit is $1000 retail value, which you achieved when you made or caused to be made the 110 copies of the $10 piece of software.
mame.dk, never heard of them.
:) Imagine every arcade console game ever made burned onto a single DVD. This would be the killer XBOX app! Bill has got the money to make it happen. It could be his gift to the world, but we will never see it.
However I have heard of the MAME burners, The Tombstone Project, and Rom-Mania!.
Not only can you obtain MAME ROMS, but you can get all the ROMS for all your old systems. I was able to ressurect my Intellivision, Commodore 64, Amiga 1000, MS-PacMan Machine, and Nintendo 64 on my PC.
I thought about putting together a project to contact all the ROM license holders and see how much they would want for the copyrights. We (the collective we) would then all contribute to a fund that would be used to buy the licenses and place them into the Public Domain. I personally contacted a few license holders and the response was quite negative.
It seems that the large corporations which own the licenses and copyrights don't want us emulating old games, but instead want us to go buy NEW game systems. They aren't the most nostalgic bunch and I am glad that all these old treasures have been preserved through emulators.
Fast Forwarding, you can play MAME on XBOX now
I sure hope it does go GPL, the CPU cores will be a real boon to umm.. umm.. well I'm sure there's someone out there somewhere trying to run linux on an arcade machine.
sig:
See the "..for smart people" banners Wired runs here? Look elsewhere guys.
I will be quite happy if MAME goes GPL, as it will solve this problem.
I'd like to see a "+1 Good Question." The three "+1 I.*s" are pretty much the same.
Generally, Slashdot moderators use Interesting to promote questions that they want answered.
Will I retire or break 10K?
First and foremost, the page that contains the version of MAME32K that we "redistribute" DOES have the full source code changes quite visibly available.
.dll that allow programs to communicate over the internet that normally would not do so. Emulation is the MOST NATURAL application of the Kaillera solution due to the popularity of arcade/console games, and the interest that people have in playing against real people, instead of the computer.
Let me move on to the next point. Kaillera is NOT, I repeat, NOT MAME32K. Kaillera is a client/server application and
You have stated: GPL would probably help here to force the source changes open, or to end the development of these particular derivative works.
This is a closed-minded view at the effects of moving to the GPL. The simple fact is that true open sourcing of a program with as much interest as MAME would bring more interest to its cousins. Frequently, Kaillera has been attacked by people that have no idea how the open source licensing works. We have also been attacked by MAMEDev members who were instantly jealous at the attention that we commanded when we released new versions of the Kaillera client. This took downloads away from the core MAME project and brought them to our derivitive, MAME32K. Most of the verbal attacks that we have suffered have subsided as people began to realize that we brought people and interest to the MAME project.
-soulctcher
(On a more personal note: It does dissapoint me that someone as involved with MAME as you, Gridle, would not do a little homework before tossing accusations towards Kaillera.)
There are also ones that are technically illegal but the manufacturer said they won't enforce the copyright.
So in other words, some video game publishers put their games under Free Beer License.
Capcom said if the game is over 3 years old they don't have a big issue about it.
Do you have any sources for this quote? If so, GO CAPCOM!
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"Wow, last I checked"
/.
You've never checked.
You're a fifteen year old fraud on
That puts you one year ahead of most others in this thread.
The whole ROM licensing issue is a game of pretend. The users pretend that they have a license for the ROMs they download. They do this using a click-through disclaimer during the download process. Meanwhile the copyright holders pretend that their ROMS have commercial value.
The reality is that the vast majority of users are stealing ROM data. But this is countered by the fact that the ROMs can't be monetized by the license holders anyway. Which brings up an interesting question: how can you steal something that isn't worth anything?
You can't steal rom images. Its an oxymoron. Unlike you who does away with the oxy.
Anyway, the point of mame was to play games that were impossible to play.
Mame is the coolest thing available to those of use who enjoy playing games.
There's not even arcades anymore.
....yet I feel it's an important point.
iD GPL's the source for it's Engine, not the game. The levels, textures, models, even (I believe) the actual game code that says what a rocket launcher does, and etc. are still firmly in the hands of Carmack and all.
I think theres a group duplicating the original quakes textures and such with "GPL like" replacements.
Wiwi
"I trust in my abilities,
but I want more then they offer"
Also, the code for the cartridge is much different from the code for the arcade version
Not if, as in the case of games for the Vs. Unisystem arcade platform and the NES console, the console hardware and the arcade hardware are so close that it isn't funny.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Dear Taito, Bally, et. al.:
We the unwashed communistic undersigned readers of slashdot do hereby beseech you to give us, for no consideration whatsoever, financial or otherwise, the right to freely copy certain items of intellectual property belonging to your companies. We understand that this would create a precedent for public ownerships and should future derivative works appear you will not be entitled to one cent of income, but we like getting stuff for free - we don't believe in intellectual property, and you know we'll just copy your shit anyway. So go on, give in to the inevitable.
(print, sign and mail)
Essentially the MAME cores make writing emulators for things much easier because all the really hard work is already done (wanna write a DOS emulator for Linux? take MAME's OPL core, 8086 CPU core, throw on some graphics emulation, and shazam!)
Emulation in general is going to become more and more important in the future for supporting legacy and closed-source software, so this could be very useful for the open-source community.
Omnes arx vestrum sunt adiuncta nobis.
Sure, there are people who are interested in only piracy, and there are people who are only interested in free games, but in a hundred years, the reason why we will have copies of arcade games from 1975 on up will be because of emulations projects like MAME.
I don't condone piracy to avoid paying for the latest game or to avoid paying a theater for a movie. But there is a difference between downloading GTA3 and downloading a 25 year old ROM that is not available for commercial sale. Not legally, but ethically.
(Btw, support Capcom. They are one of the few companies that will sell [some] older rom images)
Fry: "What do you monsters want?"
...apparently they won't need them anymore.
Donkey Kong: "One thing, and one thing only! Quarters! A million allowances worth of quarters! No slots or tokens!"
Either way ~50/50 is not "pretty reliably".
Even if it's consistently 51/49, how many hands of blackjack does a typical experienced player play in an hour?
I ought to write a homebrew blackjack program which doesn't pay anything for the Pac-Man hardware or the Vs. Unisystem hardware to see if MAME team categorizes it as a non-gambling video game.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Do they make a modern processor that's fast enough to run a Java app that emulates a 1 Mhz Z80 processor?? :)
Given that even a mediocre JVM runs Java bytecode at 1/6 the speed of native code, and good JVMs run at half speed, a 1 GHz Athlon should do it nicely. In fact, a Java applet emulates a GBA, which includes a 16 MHz ARM7TDMI processor and a graphics chip twice as powerful as the Super NES's. It seems to run at full speed on my 866 MHz PIII.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I believe somebody mentioned this in passing, but it's possible to obtain at least a few legal CapCom ROMs if you buy the HotRod joystick or ArcadePC from HanaHo games. www.hanaho.com. While I'd love to see all the arcade games, past and present, console games, heck any game or piece of software ever created licensed under the GPL or a BSD style license, I just don't think it's realistic to believe this will happen. Nintendo is still releasing Mario Bros. games, and somebody else was correct in mentioning that most game manufacturers have realized that we really would pay to play the old games. They aren't going to GPL them and give up on future revenue for those games, or give up exclusive control of the characters in the games. In that vein, I'd love to see MAME go GPL and more deals such as the Hanaho one where we can legaly obtain old ROMs on CD, even if they're not open sourced. I'd be willing to pay a fair amount if company X said they'd sell a CD filled with ROMs for X amount of money, licensed just like any other game is licensed. Backups are okay, but redistribution isn't. Say 50-200 dollars, depending on how many games were included. A few companies might be willing to totally relinquish control of their games, but I wouldn't count on it.
Did they get permission from all of the authors to approve the license change of their code? I never heard anything. Granted, my contributions were minor and happened years ago but it would still have been nice to be notified before reading about the license change on slashdot...
I've played MAME on and off for probably 5 years but never really archived any of my favorite ROMS.
I was recently in the mood to download them again to play and archive for my own use, but it seems they're now really hard to find downloadable on the net.
Years ago, a friend of mine had a CD full of MAME ROMS that he purchased from some shonky shop.
Anyone know where I can get the ROMS on CD or DVD?
War crimes, torture, lies, illegal spying... Would someone give Bush a blowjob, already, so he can be impeached?
Someone probably has linux running on Scramble hardware.
As to being a "stupid karma whore cocksucker" I hardly need more karma - I've been at maximum karma since the cap was instituted without any particular effort. With regards to your other claim, my porn collection would tend to indicate otherwise...
Oh, in case I'm not making myself absolutely clear, go crawl back into your hole, fucknuckle.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
are quite tasty even without ROMs. The framework linkage between sound/gfx/cpu is good but not perfectly modular. Mmm, code to rip...
Nintendo could claim their cartridge format is an encrypter, even if it doesn't use any sort of encryption software.
The GBA cart edge interface is somewhat of a cross between Intellivision's interleaved address and data bus and IDE's seek-and-read architecture. It uses no "scrambling of data" which is one of the DMCA's requirements for an "access control measure". It uses primarily a checksum validation on a header that contains some basic info about the cartridge and a 156-byte block of constant data. Claiming copyright on constant data in a header isn't a valid method of console monopoly protection (Sega v. Accolade). That ruling allows homebrew software like this to exist.
I think if they could prove the EULA came with the package and you saw it, they would win in court
I saw it, and I looked at it, but I don't think it's exactly a binding contract in most U.S. states. A binding contract comes from an offer that is accepted with a "consideration" (that is, an exchange of things of value). Because the consideration was performed (credit card to Best Buy cashier) before I opened the box and saw the offer, the offer is not a valid offer, and there is no binding contract.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Until the people from MAME announce their reasoning themselves, the issue is unsettled, but these possibilities don't seem to be left field. Thanks.
To whoever modded this: Did you even bother to see what the link was I was commenting about?
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
No, but it does define criminal piracy to only include offenses where the infringement has a "value" of $1000 or more.
This does distinguish piracy of $50,000 applications from $50 games or abandonware.
Perhaps you should stop reading things so selectively.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
it does define criminal piracy to only include offenses where the infringement has a "value" of $1000 or more.
You refer to 17 USC 506, which defines criminal copyright infringement. However, the courts have interpreted "private financial gain" under 17 USC 506 to include gaining the value of the copy itself, even if no money is involved.
Will I retire or break 10K?
That is why I put "value" in quotes.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
High Priest: Armaments Chapter One, verses nine through twenty-seven:
Bro. Maynard: And Saint Attila raised the Holy Hand Grenade up on high
saying, "Oh Lord, Bless us this Holy Hand Grenade, and with it
smash our enemies to tiny bits." And the Lord did grin, and the
people did feast upon the lambs, and stoats, and orangutans, and
breakfast cereals, and lima bean-
High Priest: Skip a bit, brother.
Bro. Maynard: And then the Lord spake, saying: "First, shalt thou take
out the holy pin. Then shalt thou count to three. No more, no less.
*Three* shall be the number of the counting, and the number of the
counting shall be three. *Four* shalt thou not count, and neither
count thou two, excepting that thou then goest on to three. Five is
RIGHT OUT. Once the number three, being the third number be reached,
then lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade towards thy foe, who, being
naughty in my sight, shall snuff it. Amen.
All: Amen.
-- Monty Python, "The Holy Hand Grenade"
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