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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.
Having RTFA I wonder if the bigger news isn't this part
"From now on there will be only one release executable that covers all arcades, computers and consoles," says Milanovic. "But we will stay under name 'MAME,' that is our trademark."
Does this mean we can look forward to MAME emulating our favourite consoles with the same care they've done for arcade machines? The last 2 years of MAME releases have been phenomenal, best in its history, so I really hope we see the same love given to console because rocking the Sega Master System in MAME would be something else. I've always thought of it as a natural marriage because a large number of the pages on www.system16.com state that many Sega arcades and Sega consoles used the same hardware as each other.
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/mam...
As someone who contibuted to the MESS code over 10 years ago, I'll say that I can't even recall exactly what code I touched, or if my changes even still exist. And other than this note, they'd have pretty much no way to contact me, as my old addresses lapsed years ago. But I have no problems with a more libre license; I just can't quite figure out how they could possibly pull off moving to one, as there must be many other minor code contributors like me out there.
Also depending on when you contributed you may have been under a different license which assigned the rights to Nicola.
Bingo! I was wondering why I hadn't thought of this in years. This was, in fact, the case. Of course, it's questionable whether such assignments are actually legal, but I for one am not about to question it; I'm not even in a position where I could easily prove the code was written by me at this point.
Mostly, I just want to ensure they've covered all bases so that the code can be properly freed up and not become the target of some copyright troll. Of course, so many hands have touched the code that dropping a particular chunk of code would be somewhat trivial to the project as a whole.
few things are played better on a joystick than other controls, and those that are tend to be things you buy specialist joysticks for even on PC (flight sims etc.).
I disagree: games have an element of being designed around the control mechanism. Old arcade games are better played on a joystick (I bought one for the purpose) than a game pad because they were designed with that in mind. The feel is right. In much the same way, console games would suck on an arcade joystick and many PC games (i.e. the ones requiring a mouse---could you imagine playing one of the mousy real time strategy games without a mouse?) suck on consoles. And that's not even getting on to the (multi) touch screen based games for phones and tablets which would suck without such an interface.
And don't forget the weird control games like Tempest (which is amazing, but requires arcade hardware---specifically a spinner sort of thing) or even whac-a-mole which is immense fun but requires a large, dedicated machine as the input device. Whenever I'm at the seaside (which is where you still find arcades in blighty) with my SO we always seek out a whac-a-mole (or equivalent) machine for a small tournament. Usually followed by one of those two player games with arcade guns where you shoot at hoards of enemies.
No modern games play well on joysticks because they're rare so no one writes games for them. That's not a "things were better in the days of yore" nostalgia trip, it's just an observation that the hardware has changed and games must necessarily use what is available.
One of my favourites is Robotron. Technically it plays on a game pad, but it is much more fun on dual arcade joysticks.
SJW n. One who posts facts.