MAMEWorld Forums - EmuChat - Re: Capcom Home Arcade CPS1/2 using FB Alpha

> > and of course, the FBA devs haven't given permission for it (they can't really
> > anyway, FBA is under a non-commercial license, and relicensing it would take a
> > massive effort just as it did for MAME)
> >
> > http://neo-source.com/index.php?topic=3344.msg26661#new
> >
> > so it's a £200 bootleg product.
> >
> > Hint, MAME 0.172 and newer are GPL licensed, and can be used. One of the reasons it
> > was relicensed was so that products like this COULD be done in a legal way, so to
> see
> > bootlegs like this is kinda insulting considering how much effort was put in to
> doing
> > that whole re-licensing process which was meant to benefit them.
>
> So let me see if I can lay this out right. The clauses added in to help give the
> emulation teams some legal recourse of 'see we do not allow that' has basically made
> it so the people they did not want to piss off cant use the code at all. Interesting
> conundrum. Guess back then the idea of the companies would use this code was not
> floated. Crazy...
>

There were many reasons back then.

Ironically one of them is that the emulation wasn't considered mature enough, and it would have resulted in shoddy products if they'd simply taken our code and used it for their own products.

Ironic, because now instead of taking the code we're happy with, that is available for them to use, for free, in a perfectly legal way, they're instead still illegally using the code we weren't happy with and producing the shoddy products we were hoping would be avoided.

Once MAME was considered mature enough, we went through all the steps needed to offer it under a true FOSS license.

You also have to consider just how old MAME is, OSS licensing has come a long way in that time.