[Hard core Rikki]

iPhone owners, 'rejoice'.

The MAME Team forces me to cease distribution of mame4iphone - ZodTTD Forums



"My work on the iPhone and iPod Touch is truly to provide you, yes you, with software you normally wouldn't see developed for your favorite handheld. In fact I rarely have time to enjoy my own work on these handhelds since I'm busy developing more and more. mame4iphone was no different. It was a request by fans of my previous work. Even though it wasn't a chart topper and highly in demand, I still produced a fully functional port.

So when I received this email from the MAME Team I was quite surprised:"

The following message was sent to you via the ZodTTD Forums Contact Us form by MAMEdev ( mailto:[email protected] ).

--------------------------------

Dear sir,

Please cease distributing our software immediately. You are violating the terms of the license.

Kind regards,
The MAME team

"I had my doubts with the validity of the request so I responded with:"

I'm checking if this was a valid request from the MAMEdev team. Can you verify if the information below was sent from the MAMEdev group?
From what I'm aware of, I am in full compliance with source posted on my github.com/zodttdThanks,
ZodTTD
[email protected]
http://www.zodttd.com

"Amazingly this request was authenticate. I received the following message back:"

Yes, it's us.

Please refer to:

MAME | Legal Information

• Redistributions may not be sold, nor may they be used in a commercial product or activity.

Q. Can my non-profit use MAME or an arcade cabinet running MAME to help raise money?
A. No, sorry. Even for the most worthwhile cause, this still is a commercial use of MAME and is prohibited by the license.

Calling it a 'donation' isn't a magic loophole that makes it okay to earn money from our work. Please cease.

Kind regards,
The MAME team

"So what does this mean? It means they're telling me the work I've been doing on mame4iphone is not of my own, and then they go on to say those who appreciate my work on mame4iphone is "to earn money from our [MAME Team] work".

And now they want me to cease distribution of mame4iphone. They did not even ask to stop taking donations for my work, even though it's never been donations for MAME but for my porting work on a wide range of software.


So due to the legal threat of MAME Team I am ceasing distribution of mame4iphone. What's there to do for MAME fans on the iPhone and iPod Touch?

You have two choices right off the bat:

1. Wait for MAME Team to officially support iPhone and iPod Touch.
2. You can write [email protected] and let them know what you think of this legal threat.

Who would of thought a donation link would bring down an open source project? Especially when I've kept the full sources posted on my public github source repository.

Kind regards MAME Team,
ZodTTD"

 

[Phil]

OMGAWD. I CAN RUN MAME ON MY IPHONE AT .6 FPS.

Wait, what?

 

[cottonvibes]

Well I don't see how he was violating the license.
But from the comments people were saying he had a "Donate and Download" button as the default way to download the emu; which is a bit misleading.

Since I don't know the whole situation, I don't really want to pick a side on who's "the good guy" in this case.

 

[@ruantec]

I think i can understand the MAME team.. some donation methods people/devs are using nowdays are turning there software into a semi-shareware thing rather than freeware.. the reason for that is because they are forcing people to donate and in that way gain some profits of it.

donations in my eyes need to be free donated money from people when they want and as much as they want/can and not a price tag the dev/team or whatever puts in there forms nor force people to do so... i don´t care what people may think about me after reading this post but i just post my point of view about it since that´s not the first one around(me points at PJ64).

 

[PsyMan]

Let me just quote one of the comments posted on the mame4iphone discontinuation blog entry (originally from zodttd):

If you download without reading the descriptions, you get "Error, please donate first".
And if you read the description, nowhere is mentioned that you can also choose FREE in the DropDown.
Then again, FREE isn't chosen by default, as it should be for voluntary donations.
I can't help it, but you can get the impression, that it's making money camouflaged with donations. (No offense)
Just what I think.

Although you are not forced to "donate" to get mame4iphone the default way to do so is by donating. Not to mention that this actually is against the license.

Also note that the guy does not even mention a possibility of removing the donation button. This would solve the "issue" despite what the e-mails he got claim but he does not even mention it. He makes it look like discontinuing the project is the only option left. Disgusting.

 

[@ruantec]

Its a great move to my eyes from the MAME team because if we don´t stop this now we will probably end with forced donations for every upcomming emulator and the "FREE" term is going to dissapear replaced by "Shareware" hidden into a "Donation" camouflage.

 

[nanaya]

forced donation is what you call "paying" :lol:

 

[@ruantec]

forced donation is what you call "paying" :lol:

mmmm there is a big difference between "forced donation" and "paying".... the term "forced donation" is longer so its not the same

 

[Silenus]

There are some apps doing that already.

I know it takes some work to port an app to another platform, but this forced donation is tiresome.

What if you haven't tried the app before, do you have to donate without feeling satisfied of a product that is supposed to be free?

 

[RetroRalph]

Thing is though it's rather dubious. If he went onto the street to collect donations for anything it would be ok all of a sudden? Except this is all online and has a lot more funneling of people into donating to him. On the other hand it's easy to see MAME's point of view in that they don't like anyone to make anything at all when it comes to something related to them. Does MAME have an issue with download sites hosting MAME and accepting advertisements/donations?

I don't think they would have a high chance of successfully winning a case against him. They need to put a really restrictive line in like "you need our permission to use MAME in any project".

 

[shashClp]

Bah, f_ck the MAME team, it's the perfect example of a bunch of whinners that should be beaten to death for being such idiots. Not to mention that someone should sue a few of their developers for hosting warez.

 

[Paratech]

I doubt MAME DEV liked the idea of having it ported to the Iphone, first off it wouldn't run anything full speed and secondly Apple is against hacking their IPhones for emulation. They refused C64 emulators before as well.

 

[Exophase]

Paratech, you may not be aware that MAME emulates arcade platforms throughout the ages, including ones from the early 80s and older. iPhone can probably run a lot of games up to the early 90s, so it will run many things full speed. As it is on GP2X and Wiz, a lot of people enjoy playing these games on their handhelds.

Apple doesn't want to allow emulators on the app store, but I don't think anyone really cares what Apple's stance is on jailbreaking your iPhone then downloading things off of Cydia. As far as I'm aware it's not illegal and Apple hasn't been actively fighting it. Apple has good reasons to reject emulators from their store, but that doesn't mean that they view them as damaging to the platform.

I don't think this C&D is very cool but I do think zodttd should be more above reproach and make it clearer that donating for these apps is entirely optional. Which, by the way, it is, in case any of you don't realize this.

 

[Squall-Leonhart]

uh..... did those mother****ing mame****s just call Donations, Commercialism?

..........those snarky, bottom feeding, scum sucking, algae eaters.

 

[RetroRalph]

I doubt MAME DEV liked the idea of having it ported to the Iphone, first off it wouldn't run anything full speed and secondly Apple is against hacking their IPhones for emulation. They refused C64 emulators before as well.

Yeah but they have allowed other emulators apparently, from Sega iirc? That C64 emulator seemed really cool, lots of nice easy to use features in it, has anyone followed up on that story?

Some of the old games like Donkey Kong would likely be unplayable in the latest version of MAME because of discrete sound and things of this nature, but a fair amount would be playable. If you wanted you could just put in cores from MAME that work fine on it instead of porting the whole thing, and mix and match old versions to get the fastest drivers in there. Someone has probably already done it for the other hand held versions of MAME?

 

[Xtreme2damax]

So does this license include any sites that host Mame and serve up advertisements to keep the site going and offset hosting expenses?

It would be ridiculous if that was also against the licensing terms, I can't even really see how donations can be considered commercialism even though I'll admit the method for donations was quite questionable.

Most of the time developers seek donations to offset hosting and bandwidth costs for the project due to high demand, donations are also usually sought to afford the software needed to code the project.

As long as the donations aren't being collected for personal monetary gain I really don't see a problem with it, even if donations were for personal monetary gain I still don't see much of a problem.

At the very most they should of just requested that he changes the way he receives donations, to be honest the chances of them winning a case against him are little to none.

So I suppose the Mame project and team are like the rejects of the emulation scene amirite?

 

[carrotroot]

So does this license include any sites that host Mame and serve up advertisements to keep the site going and offset hosting expenses?

The license is not tied to profits generated by site traffic, so having ads or a site donation button not associated to mame is ok.

What is not ok is when mame is used as a direct vector for profit.

 

[JJXB]

I'm on the fence about this one since on the one hand, portable games are always good. on the other hand, forced donation bull**** irritates me. partially due to the fact that you are forced to donated to PJ 64 for example if you want access to the betas. and i can't donate because of the fact my GF doesn't trust the pay system it uses. plus paying for emulators is a ****ing stupid idea.

I doubt MAME DEV liked the idea of having it ported to the Iphone, first off it wouldn't run anything full speed and secondly Apple is against hacking their IPhones for emulation. They refused C64 emulators before as well.

If the consumer gave a damn about what the company thought then PSP users would not be using emulators. so no-one gives a damn about what apple thinks since they want to be able to use their iphone in more ways without having to pay for more bloody apps from the app store.

 

[shashClp]

(...) plus paying for emulators is a ****ing stupid idea.

Care giving a reasonable argument for that? Isn't the work from programmers worth money?

 

[JJXB]

Care giving a reasonable argument for that? Isn't the work from programmers worth money?

ok then, i'll amend that to better reflect what i mean:

plus paying for emulators that were originally 100% free is a ****ing stupid idea

a programmer changing their mind to make an emulator pay-based when it was free before pisses me off. you'd have a point however if the emulator was released as a commercial emulator since they set out to put a monetary value on their work from the beginning rather than go from not putting monetary value on their work to slapping it on after. it's the equivalent of your girlfriend suddenly demanding money from you for sex when for the last X amount of years she offered it for free.