> Most of those capable of improving it have just written their own frontends instead.
^ This is what bothers me the most! What's the point of having dozens of personal projects when we could have a consolidated TEAM project here? Since MAMEteam is what the title says, a "team", why not join them to make the overall project even better? I mean, this whole discussion started because nobody wants to give MAME a decent frontend, user friendly and intuitive. Instead, several small groups or individuals wants to be bigger than MAME itself and write their names on their personal projects. This is one thing I really don't get.
For the record, I'm using QMC2 nowadays. Is it perfect? Hell no! But today it's the close as 'useful' as we can get with the current MAME version. But let's suppose that something happens to the QMC2 or other frontend author...who would take charge of their project then? I mean, if it was part of MAME as an internal UI, other skilled enough developers would take care of it and it would keep moving on in sync with MAME.