> > would the ticket you charge visitors be considered a commercial use? would you risk > > in any case to be sued, when you can choose a different emulator, released under > > GPL/BSD license, without the need to contact MESS developers to clarify if it's > > commercial use or not? > > IANAL but the commercial use clause only covers redistributions. So if you aren't > redistributing MESS/MAME then I don't see how your point is relevant.
from my (very limited) experience with legal offices in public institutions, any non-standard license on software can trigger paranoid doubts. if the person in charge is serious, it would just contact the developers to clarify the matter. if the person is lazy and an alternative choice with standard license is available, the answer can easily be "go for the standard"
this was not the case with the paper which triggered the discussion (they ended up using closed source emulators, so our license could not have been the real issue), but I was talking in general: any deviation from standard OSI-licenses is often seen as source of troubles...
I don't pretend it to be relevant for MAME, but it's happened to my former colleague at university so it's not unheard of