> It seems beyond ironic to me that a group of people could do all the work required in > building and running a museum, hiring people, advertising, collecting all the pieces > and even erm, actually reading the mame license and then after all that they are > somehow too lazy to send a 5 minute email asking mamedev for a special use > permission. That sudden jolt of laziness sounds really unlikely.
Agreed, the whole 'museum' thing sounds like nothing but a red herring.
As to why Mame in a museum would somehow be critical to arcade hardware preservation in open source documentation form is beyond me.
The critical part of this preservation is that the source code is open and availble for examination, which it already was under the current licence.
How allowing commercial and in the case of BSD licencing, proprietary forks is somehow supposed to gain the project anything is also beyond me.
So I find it weird to say the least that Aaron who turned over the Mame reins, and R.B who not so long ago declared a hiatus from Mame are now back pushing this commercial friendly re-licence agenda so hard.
I can't shake the feeling that something is rotten in Denmark as the stated reasons don't make sense against the major upheaval this relicencing seems to result in.
I do hope I'm wrong, and I would also want to excuse my poor 'tongue-in cheek' attempt at painting Aaron and R.B as caricatures of Microsoft and Apple, I have nothing but respect for all the work they've put into Mame and Mess, but I likewise have nothing but respect for all the other contributors who are now seemingly having a re-licencing more or less forced upon them due to Aaron, R.B and from what I understand Micko's re-licencing plans.