As I recall this was to prevent the use of MAME in commercial arcade settings, beyond this MAME has a policy where they will only emulate arcade games which haven't had commercial circulation for a number of years.
Same goes for the sister project MESS (which has now merged with MAME) that is targeting consoles and computers.
> beyond this MAME has a policy where they will only emulate arcade games which haven't had commercial circulation for a number of years.
I wonder how strict they are on that aspect of things, because in Japan you still have a number of arcades with games from the 80s and 90s. Isnt that considered commercial circulation ?
Note that such games actually run on some kind of emulators, too. No idea what they use, but they clearly do not use the original hardware anymore.
>I wonder how strict they are on that aspect of things, because in Japan you still have a number of arcades with games from the 80s and 90s. Isnt that considered commercial circulation ?
By that logic you wouldn't be able to emulate anything, since there are certainly places where old machines are active (as in, coin-operated).
I think the policy regarding emulation is something like 2-3 years after manufacturing of said arcade machines have ceased, but I think that is also on a case-by-case basis, as in sometimes they wait quite a bit longer, shoot'em ups from Cave comes to mind.
Same goes for the sister project MESS (which has now merged with MAME) that is targeting consoles and computers.