They are emulating the hardware, not pirating the software.

I don't think DOSBox needs to get permission from id Software because it can run Commander Keen.

If the game publishers want to sell their ROMs, they are free to. In fact, because MAME exists, they actually might find some customers to sell to!

Or to take a concrete example, I believe several re-releases on GOG take advantage of DOSBox to ensure games are playable on modern systems.

The MAME software does not include the ROMs and Disk images.

http://mamedev.org/legal.html

It depends on the country if downloading the ROMs or Disk Images is legal or not.

Some of the ROMs to released for free for use with MAME: http://mamedev.org/roms/

The creators of those arcade games made the ROM images free.

There was a Starroms company that sold the Atari arcade ROMs for a price. But they went out of business.

I'm sorry your ROMs you helped make are pirated all over the Internet. In some places they are archived like at the Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/messmame

It is like a museum that tries to save the older tech stuff that few people care about. Once JSMAME is finished the arcade games will run in a web browser.

I want to thank you for making these classic arcade games and say sorry that people pirate your work, but MAME does not distribute ROMs it is select websites on the Internet and BitTorrent sites as well that distribute them.

MAME assumes that the user has access to the arcade game and dumped the ROM themselves because they legally own it. But in truth most people just pirate the ROMs, and I wanted to be honest about that.

I think his point was that if most pirate the ROMs, why bother with relicensing the source - just redistribute that without appropriate licensing, too.

Both are the work of developers, both are used by all users of MAME.

But the MAME developers are not distributing ROMs at all. Just because someone else is doing something illegal, doesn't mean they should too.

I am willing to bet that effectively every single MAME developer has pirated one or more ROMs at one point. Infringement is infringement. The "they don't distribute it with ROMs" is a red herring if those same people are themselves pirating ROMs.

In order to make the game work, they need the ROM and/or CHD file. I doubt every developer has gotten the rights to license the ROM etc and just pirated it to get it to work.

In the late 1990s people used to earn money selling MAME CDs with the ROMs on them. People thought they were getting legit ROMs, but it was just more pirating.

StarROMS sold some Atari ROMs and I think it was legit but they got shut down.

If only there was some sort of system that sells ROMs legally and gets permission to sell the ROMs and build it into MAME or MESS so each ROM or Floppy can be bought and the original ROM developers make money from the sales. But such a system isn't in place so most get their ROMs via piracy.

So are you arguing that people shouldn't even attempt to emulate older hardware, or that they shouldn't worry about the law when doing it?

My feeling is they should remember that they are still handling pirated material - even though using it these days might as well be considered a zero risk.

With the future open-sourcing of MAME this stuff will be everywhere. And, unless you're playing Roto or Gridlee, you're most certainly handling pirated material. Doesn't matter if it's on your local hard drive or archive.org.

Right. Because they are still making and selling classic arcade machines... oh right. But some folks refuse to just let all that code go extinct in dead arcade machines in barns and sheds around the world.

Actually, some still are:

http://www.namcoamerica.com/game.php?gameid=32

Point is: what qualifies you to decide how those old assets should be used? Because you love the game more than the original publisher allegedly does?

So by that logic, why does anyone care at all what the original MAME contributors think of their code being switched into an open-source license? Why are their requests any more or less important than the publishers?

The point of this hand-grenade was merely to point this out, unpopular an opinion as it is. This whole thinking of "I'm a fan therefore I decide" took us over the cliff a long time ago and there's no going back.

The developers of MAME/MESS get to decide on the license of the MAME/MESS source because they wrote it. That source does not include any roms, because they didn't write those. They're not asking you to open source your game because they're not proposing to open source your game.

Sounds like you're angry at the wrong people.

Joezy, I am concerned you might not be working towards an offer of code contribution.

My contributions are involuntary, Jason. They're in some of those ROM images being freely traded about these last couple of decades.

Unfortunately I never had any contracts offering me royalties on future republished or derivative works unlike some of my peers. Not that they could claim any these days, anyway. But I think it still should be put in the discourse for posterity.

So, what you been up to, lately?

And, more importantly, what changed your mind? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1997159

I suspect joezydeco is reacting less against MAME and more against orionblastar's suggestion to, in effect, pirate.

Since there is no legal way to buy the ROMs, most arcade machines have been recycled and trashed by now, it isn't possible to buy the original arcade machine, and the only way to play these arcade games now is via MAME, it seems as if piracy is the only way to get ROMs until someone gets permission from ROM developers to sell their ROMs.

MAME has thousands of ROMs and games, it would be near impossible to get a license to sell each and every ROM.

StarROMs tried that with the Atari arcade ROMs but failed.

Your point is accepted. FWIW, I think software licenses are every bit as stupid as copyright over sequences of bytes that can be interpreted as Mario.

One can't own information as if it were property.