Re: MAME emulator is giving incentive to use non-free software

[alírio eyng]

Ivan Zaigralin:
> Yes, it emulates non-free software.
wait, this is missing the point
there are several categories of software that are itself free and can
be used to run (directly or indirectly) nonfree software:

nonfree down in dag: dosemu
_only_ nonfree up in dag: ndiswrapper
nonfree oriented community: wine
free oriented community: gcc

nonfree down is nonfree, you can't build it in freedom
nonfree up is nonfree, you can't execute it _usefully_ in freedom
nonfree community, example:
if i go to appdb in wine site, from the "top-10 platinum", nine have
"license: retail", one have "license: free to use"; they not just
promote nonfree software but also spread misleading information; this
should be "price: nongratis" and "price: gratis"

my approach was to remove nonfree down and nonfree up and hide the
package/executable of nonfree community

joshua proposed forking nonfree community[1]; this is still better,
and still more effort

> No, it's no longer relevant. I mean,
> it's no longer relevant as software, but only as the historical record
> of what entertainment software was like in the times of yore. New
> nonfree games are being written today in order to seduce people, so I
> can see why something like wine is dangerous, but no one, no one will
> get seduced by a museum piece.
wine-supported nonfree programs are increasing, mame-supported nonfree
programs don't.
so wine should get priority, if they are in the same category

> MAME does not give any incentive to use
> non-free software, because all of this old software is obsolete and
> useless. But it does give an ability to study it from the historical
> perspective, which is a good thing.
not sure what it means
maybe "mame source code should be allowed to be studied"?
 sure, but this don't justify including executables
maybe "using nonfree software with historical interest is ok"?
 i don't believe the motive to use it (fun, nostalgia, historical
interest) justify nonfree software

from [2], for _most_ hardware it emulates, mame is nonfree up, you
can't execute it _usefully_ in freedom (note _usefully_ means
something more than playing with menus or commandline switches)
so i think mame should be broke down, as there are parts in different categories

[1]http://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/gnu-linux-libre/2016-04/msg00005.html
[2]http://docs.mamedev.org/basicuse/gettingstarted.html#system-requirements,
section "BIOS Dumps and Software"