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 non-free software, because all of this old software is obsolete and 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"