MAMEWorld Forums - EmuChat - So what the fuck's going on?

I worked out today that I've put around £2,000.00 into dumping ROMS for the MAME project over the last decade, through regular contributions each month.

I receive no direct information on my contributions (yet alone the results of my contribution, i.e. actual board purchases) unless I google my name + MAME and find it in random changelogs.

This is unacceptable as I both lose trust in where money is going for months at a time, and find I can't recommend other enthusiasts contribute - simply because it is money thrown to a vacuuum. But this is just a fraction of my concern.

It is necessary for visibility to exist when people contribute to this project. It is necessary for this project to exist. It is VITAL that the leader of this project reaches out to its investors, even if indirectly, via a Patreon or blog update. Said leader is also required to account for broader lack of progress. Viz.:

I am pretty pissed off with what Haze has had to say about [you know who]. I don't generally side with people - but Haze and I have both had Pull Requests turned down / ignored that are dubious. Haze has made improvements to 'perceived accuracy' that do not contradict our founding accuracy principle. I put it to you all that replacing inaccurate facets of a game with better facsimiles of real tech is fine, so long as it is well documented in the source code. What happens when one does this? It makes people actually PLAY the game via MAME, and find other bugs that take us all forwards.

MAME is a fucking church, but not an artefact. We adhere to accuracy as our primary driver, and to the architecture of our source code (perhaps even if that means salacious bootleg compatibility). So long as we don't change course from the primary goal, everything is fair game.

This family needs leadership. We are at bereft in that department. The 'MAME 2003 Plus' basterdisation of this project is likely the most well used version of this software in the World. Even if we meet them 10% of the way - the founding principles of MAME loses exactly NOTHING!