Arcade game simulator MAME is made fully open source available
The popular arcade game emulator MAME has gone completely open source. According to the developers, the new license of the program meets the requirements of the Open Source Initiative and has the approval of the Free Software Foundation.
Over the past ten months, the current folks behind MAME, the multi arcade machine emulator, have been reaching out to former developers and outside contributors. They were asked what kind of license they preferred. As a result, more than 90 percent of MAME’s files are now BSD licensed. This license can be used as the name of and the author and the license is mentioned when the software is incorporated into own product.
MAME is an emulator that allows you to play a variety of classic arcade games. By loading a romset into the program, the games can be played on a PC. Since May 2015, MAME has merged with MESS, an emulator for older computers and game consoles. As such, games for, for example, the Commodore 64 and Atari 2600 can also be played with the program
The project as a whole is distributed under the terms of GNU GPL-2.0+. Under this license, a user may do whatever he wants with the software, so long as that right is passed on to others and the names of the authors of the software are credited. Often the source code for the program is appended to the files. Permission is required for the use of the name and logo of MAME.
Those who believe they have contributed to MAME’s source code and who have not yet been contacted are asking the current developers to do so on their own initiative.