MAME going open-source

[beschizza]

[Read the post]

[kuangmk11]

This excites me.

[L_Mariachi]

Does anyone know of an OSX frontend besides QMC2 that hasn’t been abandoned?

[mewyn]

There’s openemu which is more suited for standard emulators, but in its experimental drivers it has a mame driver; I found it to be not good. Other than that, all have been abandoned; it’s rather sad. I really want a decent frontend for mame on my mac.

[stephen_schenck]

I’m most surprised to learn that MAME wasn’t already open source.

[sandmansandine]

OpenEmu in the experimental version supports MAME (to get to the experimental download you click the arrow next to the download button) http://openemu.org/

[Wiz_Odd]

So what are some implications of this? Will we see commercial products that use MAME code so we can see “legit” releases of old licensed stuff (like Atari VCS versions of Space Invaders, Berzerk, and Defender)?

It’s hard to imagine MAME could be ported to more platforms, it’s everywhere already. I’m not killifish for a downside, but it’s hard for me to see how MAME could be much better than it already is.

[L_Mariachi]

Well wouldja look at this: http://attractmode.org

(I have no idea why that never came up at all on a search for mame osx frontend but it was #1 for mame linux frontend.)

Haven’t tried it yet but at least it’s not abandoned!

[mewyn]

I’ve seen Attract Mode and it’s more of a full-screen forntend for a dedicated machine rather than QMC2 which is a frontend for a ‘normal’ computer. I’m going to be using Attract Mode for my MAME box, but I do want a more widget-driven frontend for my other machines.

[Bavi_H]

This Slashdot summary clarifies:

The source code of MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) has long been freely available, but it’s never been completely libre. Instead, it’s been available under a modified BSD license that prohibits, among other things, commercial use of the code. MAME engineer Miodrag Milanovic explains that such a license was put in place to deter “misuse of MAME in illegal ways,” but it also kept legitimate commercial entities doing business with the software. Examples of such could be museums that charge entry fees from using MAME in their exhibits, or copyright holders rereleasing vintage games encapsulated inside MAME. Now the project wants to go fully open. Milanovic continues: “Our aim is to help legal license owners in distributing their games based on MAME platform, and to make MAME become a learning tool for developers working on development boards.” As of yet, there are no specific details about the new license.