> You'll also note that this whitepaper is from August 2010. This is surely not the > first time an archive project decided not to go with MAME/MESS over its license - > despite it being otherwise perfectly suited for this use.
They didn't test MESS, so we have no idea whether it would be perfectly suited. However while they deemed the MAME license as bad, they said that closed source commercial software was ok.
I don't know whether they made up a reason to exclude MESS specifically, or whether they just happened to stumble on arbitrary nonsensical rules.