It's equal parts a test, and a reaction.
First, it's a test to see if people can be cool like Fonzie.
Second, it's a reaction to the fact that when Danger Express was first added due to a complete miscommunication, the guy who originally dumped Danger Express pretty much: - Flipped out - Attributed malice where there was none - Made a bunch of blustery threats about how he'd never post another prototype (not that, as far as I know, he'd posted any others) unless it was removed - Never posted any other prototypes regardless, despite the MAME team capitulating and removing it for all of these years.
That's generally not how a two-way relationship works, where you say "I won't ever do X unless you do Y," then never do X anyway, because it makes the other party entirely rethink whether there's any value to having done Y in the first place. As an external contributor nowadays, I'm noticing a mentality shift across at least some of the developers, where they're tired of MAME and its team members being used as tools for collectors and bootleggers to play these little ego games. There's no shortage of collectors who mistakenly treat the preservation of history like some kind of power trip, and after so many decades of putting up with it, I suspect at least a few people are pretty much done capitulating.
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