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MAME Changing License To Fully Libre One
jones_supa writes: The source code of MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) has long been freely available, but it's never been completely libre. Instead, it's been available under a modified BSD license that prohibits, among other things, commercial use of the code. MAME engineer Miodrag Milanovic explains that such a license was put in place to deter "misuse of MAME in illegal ways," but it also kept legitimate commercial entities doing business with the software. Examples of such could be museums that charge entry fees from using MAME in their exhibits, or copyright holders rereleasing vintage games encapsulated inside MAME. Now the project wants to go fully open. Milanovic continues: "Our aim is to help legal license owners in distributing their games based on MAME platform, and to make MAME become a learning tool for developers working on development boards." As of yet, there are no specific details about the new license.
Posting as AC because I don't have an account, but I've been a periodic contributor to MAME and MESS for the past 15 years or so. For those unaware, MESS is the sister project to MAME. While MAME has always concentrated on coin-op games, MESS is the effective catch-all for everything else - handhelds, phones, set-top-boxes, consoles, computers, development boards, and more - using the same core library. For the sake of visibility, just this past week we have made the decision to incorporate MESS into MAME as a fundamental component.
As for licensing, The vast majority of contributors have been contacted, and responses are trickling in. In general the responses seem split across "I don't care", "GPLv2", and the stock BSD 3-clause that we're hoping to move toward. You can keep track of the ongoing per-source-file relicensing on MAME/MESS's Github page here: https://github.com/mamedev/mame
I can say that the move to Github has been a uniformly positive one, as it has streamlined the process of incorporating patches from external developers, and has brought more visibility to the project. Visibility is a critical thing for projects like MAME and MESS, because we're literally working against the clock to preserve digital history, so more people feeling motivated to contribute to the project is unequivocally a Good Thing(tm). While there are those out there who see the project as nothing more than a venue for free games, the fact is that the project allows people who own these arcade boards to repair them in many cases, and it provides an archive for companies that are not otherwise interested in preserving their own history. Bit-rot is a real thing, and by preserving the contents of EEPROMs, flash ROMs, PROMs, PALs/GALs and other programmable devices, people are able to restore their games to a working state more often than not.
I would go so far as to say that the project, in fact, benefits game companies themselves. I've worked in the industry for the better part of 10 years now, and I can tell you that most companies are not interested in proper archiving of their early games. However, with retro game packs being an actual viable product these days, these companies are now going back through their archives only to find that they didn't keep any copies of the disks or ROMs around. MAME and MESS, by incentivizing the decentralized distribution of these games, has essentially ensured that these games will still be around when the companies decide to unearth them. This isn't just idealism, either - if you look at retro game packs from companies like Sega, Taito, Namo, and Konami, you'll find that more often than not, they actually use the same ROM files that MAME does, in ZIP files, sometimes even containing the readme.txt from the original dumper - so you know it didn't originate internally to the company.
Ultimately, the relicensing is one of many steps necessary to bring broader appeal to the project, whether it is to businesses, developers, or users.
Given the wording, that sounds like they're going to have to contact either every contributor for copyright re-attribution, or rewrite their code for them.
That's basically what they are doing.
It simply means that the functionality of MAME and MESS will be put into the same executable.
Since everyone knows that MAME has the best chiptune emulation! There are other uses for the MAME code than full system emulation.
One can hope that the Yamaha YM2151 emulation will join the list but either way its a good thing for retro enthusiasts!