it was open and free, just not fully considered FOSS because it had non-commercial clauses on it's usage. Oddly, the MAME homepage still tries to give the impression that you can't use the software commercially. This is incorrect on all accounts. The only thing you can't do is use the MAME trademark, and their new logo isn't even registered yet, the only thing that is registered is a generic text moniker MAME. But that can't stop someone from forking the project and removing relevant trademarks and renaming it to a different product.
Oddly, the MAME homepage still tries to give the impression that you can't use the software commercially.
What do you mean? I haven't really looked too deep into the site, but the homepage and download pages at least don't really say anything that would give me that impression.
Restrictions on distribution is not open or free in my book. The trademark issue I get, other projects have done it too, but that was OK because Open Source means you can always fork it. The non-commercial clause on redistribution is another thing entirely, going against the spirit of both Free Software and Open Source (Freedoms 0 and 2 for the further, Rules 1 and 6 for the later). And sadly, no, you can't fork your way from such a clause.
I think what Sleaker was trying to imply with this comment:
it was open and free, just not fully considered FOSS
is that MAME was open (the source code was published, and updates were continually amended to that publication) and free (the developers of MAME did not charge a fee for using, reading or otherwise obtaining either the source code or compiled binaries). Whether or not there were additional restrictions on how you could use it (freedom of use) is somewhat tangental to their point.
Additionally, as you can observe, both "open" and "free" are lowercase variants of the words, where as you write "Free Software" and "Open Source", which are capitalized pronouns. Open Source and software that is distributed openly as source code are different, but they are cut from the same cloth. Being pedantic doesn't help anyone.
Comments
it was open and free, just not fully considered FOSS because it had non-commercial clauses on it's usage. Oddly, the MAME homepage still tries to give the impression that you can't use the software commercially. This is incorrect on all accounts. The only thing you can't do is use the MAME trademark, and their new logo isn't even registered yet, the only thing that is registered is a generic text moniker MAME. But that can't stop someone from forking the project and removing relevant trademarks and renaming it to a different product.
What do you mean? I haven't really looked too deep into the site, but the homepage and download pages at least don't really say anything that would give me that impression.
Restrictions on distribution is not open or free in my book. The trademark issue I get, other projects have done it too, but that was OK because Open Source means you can always fork it. The non-commercial clause on redistribution is another thing entirely, going against the spirit of both Free Software and Open Source (Freedoms 0 and 2 for the further, Rules 1 and 6 for the later). And sadly, no, you can't fork your way from such a clause.
I think what Sleaker was trying to imply with this comment:
is that MAME was open (the source code was published, and updates were continually amended to that publication) and free (the developers of MAME did not charge a fee for using, reading or otherwise obtaining either the source code or compiled binaries). Whether or not there were additional restrictions on how you could use it (freedom of use) is somewhat tangental to their point.
Additionally, as you can observe, both "open" and "free" are lowercase variants of the words, where as you write "Free Software" and "Open Source", which are capitalized pronouns. Open Source and software that is distributed openly as source code are different, but they are cut from the same cloth. Being pedantic doesn't help anyone.