> > > The problem is Nebula (AFAIK) uses the MAME FM cores*, which even to this day we
> > > haven't got Jarek to agree to relicense for commercial use (it's one of the
> biggest
> > > sticking blocks in our relicesning efforts as they're used by over half the
> drivers
> > > in MAME) so unless ElSemi specifically rewrote them for this then it simply can't
> > be
> > > legal. There's other MAME code in Nebula too, so it's really not as clear cut as
> > they
> > > make out.
> >
> > Nebula definitely uses the MAME FM cores and some other MAME bits I don't recall.
> So
> > it probably wasn't legal for GameTap to use it and it's likely not for DotEmu
> either,
> > unless they replaced all of it.
>
>
> I can hardly remember who wrote them (it was many years ago), but GameTap had their
> own FM, 68k and z80 cores that they plugged into a stripped Nebula core and
> integrated in their platform.
> I just provided the code I was able to redistribute (only the code written by me) and
> assistance on how to plug the other cores and then into their frontends.
I guess this warrants further investigation then, to find out if the GameTap cores were genuinely original / sourced from license compatible code.
If they were (which I'm just going to assume to be the case, because honestly I don't care that much) it clears it from our point of view, which is good.
I guess the problem is dotemu already have a really bad reputation in this field, with traces of MAME code appearing in some of their other products. There have been issues with other ways of getting 'legal' SNK titles recently too, for example the recent NeoGeo handheld that was running FBA and others, it makes people suspicious.
The other issue is, as noted, that these packages were very lazy with the romsets they provided, and with regards to not deleting references to bootleg stuff. Including illegal hacked bioses like the unibios, and referencing bootleg romsets is going to make a product look suspicious when it's meant to be licensed. We document them in MAME, because we're documenting history in an unbiased way, but if you're releasing a product licensed from the original developers they really have no value.
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