MAMEWorld Forums - EmuChat - My take on the MAME licensing controversy (from Daphne author)

> > Forget about the MAME license for a minute ... something more disturbing to me is
> the
> > fact that you don't appreciate it when people thank you for the work you do. I
> > understand a thank you isn't income but the very least you can do is be
> appreciative
> > when someone says thanks.
>
> hi Jason,
>
> I can understand how you would take exception to my comments. Let me try to clarify.
> Here is a typical situation:
>
> An excited user comes to my chat room and says "I just spend $2000 on a top of the
> line multi-arcade game cabinet! I just spent $50 for some fancy frontend with skins.
> I just dropped another $50 for DVDs from some guy selling Daphne + Dragon's Lair
> mpegs. Thank you so much for Daphne! YOU'VE MADE MY DREAMS COME TRUE!!! I can finally
> play Dragon's Lair again!!!!! I've wanted this so much since I was a child!!!"
>
> I know this guy is just a fan and he is excited and he thinks he is making my day by
> personally thanking me BUT the ultimate message that I hear is:
>
> "The work that the guy put in to bundle Daphne+Dragon'sLairMPEG onto one DVD for me
> is worth $50. The work that you did to write the emulator in the first place is worth
> $0."
>
> This kills my motivation to keep working on the project.
>
> > If you feel like you're being taken advantage of, maybe
> > it's time to stop developing.
>
> I have stopped developing publicly, for several years now. I continue to develop
> privately.

Matt honestly this has lowered my opinion of you... I thought you knew better.

Emulators and emulation are supposed to be free, period. It's one thing if the original commercial entity has commissioned someone to write an emulator and properly release their stuff, but if not you are making money by selling someone elses IP. Even if it isn't illegal to do so, it can certainly be considered immoral.

I know that Daphne's case is a bit special, as you support three commercially available games with permission, but the rest of the games in Daphne... well the only way to get them really is to steal them (nope owning the laserdiscs doesn't give you any legal rights unfortunately).

So as much as I think piracy is b.s. on the other hand it isn't a good idea to release a piece of software specifically designed to support piracy if you are going to charge for it.

Writing an emulator or doing anything for this community reall, is a tedious, thankless job. It is supposed to be, you are supposed to do it for the love of the game (literally). If you don't have that mindset then you shouldn't be involved in game preservation.

We are the digital equivalent of museum curators, charity workers, and historians. It's always nice to get a thank you and even nicer to have a few bucks thrown your way, but you should NEVER expect it. That's getting paid to do the right thing. Who does that?

I think you are going to take this the wrong way so let me clarify.

Just as some examples:

If made a deal with digital leisure to have a custom "turn-key" version of daphne included with their discs I would be all for it and willing to pay for it. DL gets some money, you get some money, everybody is happy.

If you were to get permission from DL to sell a special build of daphne that only supports their games, again I'd pay for that. It would be on the up and up.

On the other hand paying you to play games I can't buy legally or donating to bribe you into supporting more games I still can't buy legally. Yeah that's not happening.

I love ya, man. I've always been a proud supporter of your work and daphne in general, but the thought that you've been holding back public releases because we didn't pay you sickens me. It's your right to be selfish, but you need to understand that you are being selfish. It doesn't cost you a red cent to release software you've already wrote, so there isn't any reason not to.