
MAME is going completely open-source to be a 'learning tool for developers' - Impossible
http://gamasutra.com/view/news/243598/MAME_is_going_open_source_to_be_a_learning_tool_for_developers.php
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drewmate
How does this work for people who contributed code under one license (thinking
it would stay that way) and don't want their contributions released under
another license? In practice, I doubt they'll run in to any issues, but what
if they wanted to release all the code under a more commercially permissive
license and contributors had a problem with that?

Does MAME own all contributions? Could they change the license to require
license fees? If not, why can they change the license after the fact?

~~~
ronjouch
Answering to _" why can they change the license after the fact?"_ , I think
the answer is something close to "Licenses can be changed after the fact,
provided the owners/maintainers get permission from each contributor, or
rewrite the problematic parts".

VLC went through a similar transition (from GPL to LGPL); jbkempf's blogposts
about this experience may be of interest to you:

\- [http://www.jbkempf.com/blog/post/2012/How-to-properly-
relice...](http://www.jbkempf.com/blog/post/2012/How-to-properly-relicense-a-
large-open-source-project)

\- [http://www.jbkempf.com/blog/post/2012/How-to-properly-
relice...](http://www.jbkempf.com/blog/post/2012/How-to-properly-relicense-a-
large-open-source-project-part-2)

\- [http://www.jbkempf.com/blog/post/2012/How-to-properly-
relice...](http://www.jbkempf.com/blog/post/2012/How-to-properly-relicense-a-
large-open-source-project-part-3)

------
ekianjo
Wow, Gamasutra really has no understanding of Free and Open Source Software
concepts. That is really not a good place to announce this kind of things.
When you read "going completely open source" and see what it actually means,
there's only one appropriate reaction: faceplam.

~~~
malkia
Gamasutra targets game developers. And there are not many of them that would
like to use license that would force them to release their source code. Such
licenses (as GPL for example) may be used only for internal tools, and even
then it may be a problem (GPL3). For example if you need to work with third-
party outsourcing company that would hire people to do extra art for your
project, and you need to give them the custom tools, if the latter are using
GPL, then who knows what the third-party artists might request.

if MAME is released under MIT/BSD then it can be freely put in consoles,
gameboy, psp, etc.

~~~
gillianseed
>and you need to give them the custom tools, if the latter are using GPL, then
who knows what the third-party artists might request.

At most, source code to those custom tools which contain GPL licensed code.

>if MAME is released under MIT/BSD then it can be freely put in consoles,
gameboy, psp, etc.

MAME (as a project) is now to be released under GPLv2 unless I'm missing
something, but there is also a lot of BSD licensed code in MAME which can be
used in proprietary projects.

That said I don't think the MAME code is of particular interest to game
developers, as it's basically cpu and video/sound chip emulation coupled with
drivers.

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Crito
> _" MAME's source code has long been freely available, but it's never
> technically been open source. Instead it's been available under a modified
> BSID license that prohibits, among other things, commercial use of the
> code."_

Sounds to me that it has long been open source, but not Free software.

~~~
JoshTriplett
"source available" and "open source" are not the same thing; it was neither
open source nor free software, the definitions of both of which explicitly
disallow restrictions on commercial use.

And if you're suggesting that there's another meaning of "open source": that
ship sailed a _long_ time ago, and attempting to use that term for any other
purpose can only lead to confusion.

~~~
ekianjo
> "source available" and "open source" are not the same thing

To be fair "open source" is a bastard wording in the first place. It was
created by people who did not understand the Free Software movement and did
not want to relate to RMS. The only true legal term is Free Software, Open
Source is close to meaningless without a license attached to the term.

~~~
JoshTriplett
That's a little over the top. While it's true that Open Source was effectively
company-friendly branding and marketing for Free Software (and rather
effective at that), it still refers to the same software (modulo very nitpicky
differences in definition), and Open Source has a clear definition.

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kriro
Excellent news. I might buy an arcade machine to put MAME on it then. Friend
of mine had two imported from Japan but unfortunately sold them while I wasn't
around. It's a ton of fun to play games with actual arcade controls and the
good nostalgia feeling.

There are also multiple online posts about building your own, maybe I'll do
that to be even more open. This is the one that I stil have bookmarked:
[http://www.koenigs.dk/mame/eng/stepprojectmame.htm](http://www.koenigs.dk/mame/eng/stepprojectmame.htm)

~~~
ido
Why does it matter for your use case? Or are you planning on putting it
somewhere public, like a bar (so the "no commercial use" term might have
kicked in)?

~~~
kriro
For me, it only matters for a strange use case. We wanted to put one up during
a community/neighbourhood festival and it was somewhat icky so we didn't.
Would be fun to see them in bars, too. I know at least one patron that'll
probably put one up someday.

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spb
Does anybody know what license they're going to be going for?

~~~
unwiredben
From looking at their repo, it looks like standard BSD-3-Clause. They've been
tagging all the files with license comments at the top as they go through
identifying authors and making sure everything is re-licensed consistently.

~~~
protomyth
from their site "MAME is free. Its source code is free. Selling either is not
allowed."

Wonder how that works with the BSD-3-Clause?

~~~
duskwuff
That's referring to the old license. The "selling either is not allowed" part
is going to go away under new licensing.

------
xchip
I guess the MAME guys want to create an itunes for the games, that way
companies like Namco and so on can sell their games thought Mame. And the Mame
gusy would get a 30% as ususal.

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fsk
That is a misleading headline. MAME always was open source, but it was
distributed under its own custom license, which forbade distributing it with
ROM images. For example, if Nintendo wanted to distribute its
Arcade/GB/GBC/GBA/NES/SNES rom images wrapped with MAME, the current license
forbids that.

The reason for that restriction is that the MAME devs were concerned about
getting sued by the copyright holders.

That's like saying "Nethack isn't open source", because it has its own custom
license rather than one of the more traditional licenses. A lot of older
projects have their own custom license, because they started before there were
a couple of standardized popular licenses.

They plan to switch to a more traditional license. I think they picked the
GPL.

Their plan is to get permission from all the authors, and rewrite the code of
people who don't give permission.

Some of the core contributors are POed and refuse to give consent, and they
left the project.

I'm not sure how rewriting works, since the hard part really was figuring out
how to emulate the rom correctly. If you change the variable names, refactor
it, but keep the same core logic, does that count as "different"?

~~~
mjg59
No, the reason it wasn't open source wasn't that it had its own custom
license, it was that that custom license didn't meet the Open Source
Definition. The license didn't forbid distributing it with ROM images, it
forbid any form of commercial distribution or use. That's clearly not open
source.

~~~
wodenokoto
I don't know who decides the term "open source", but looking at the wikipedia
article, availability for commercial use, does not seem to be a core concept
of the definition, but rather that source code is available and that people
are allowed to modify it.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source)

~~~
detaro
[http://opensource.org/](http://opensource.org/)

Their definition usually is accepted (and the MAME project refers to it in its
roadmap when describing why they weren't open source before)

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tehchromic
glad to hear it. not to start a debate over aesthetics, but I've never been
terrible impressed by video game art in museums and galleries - not that the
work itself isn't impressive, it's just so hopelessly introverted and
codified, that it just hasn't been capable of translating into the
gallery/fine art setting yet, in my experience. The two worlds don't undertand
eachother, and I'll say the same about 'outsider' art - I never enjoyed it's
curation although I've loved the art. I'd love to be proven wrong by someone
though, on the video game front, and I'd love that person to be me of course
haha, here's to dreaming.

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gpl2000
So I can't use the or borrow the mane source code without triggering a
derivative?

This whole code base is now forever useless. All of that effort is officially
gone to waste.

~~~
59nadir
How so? Why is it useless?

