mame/docs/mame.txt

MAME(tm), the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator
Copyright (c) 1997-2013 by Nicola Salmoria and the MAME team
MAME is a trademark owned by Nicola Salmoria


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I. Purpose
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MAME is strictly a non-profit project. Its main purpose is to be a
reference to the inner workings of the emulated arcade machines. This is
done both for educational purposes and for preservation purposes, in
order to prevent many historical games from disappearing forever once the
hardware they run on stops working. Of course, in order to preserve the
games and demonstrate that the emulated behavior matches the original,
you must also be able to actually play the games. This is considered a
nice side effect, and is not MAME's primary focus.

It is not our intention to infringe on any copyrights or patents on the
original games. All of MAME's source code is either our own or freely
available. To operate, the emulator requires images of the original ROMs,
CDs, or hard disks from the arcade machines, which must be provided by
the user. No portions of the original game code are included in the
executable.


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II. Cost
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MAME is free. Its source code is free. Selling either is not allowed.


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III. Image Files
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ROM, CD, and hard disk images are all copyrighted material. They cannot
be distributed without the explicit permission of the copyright owner.
They are not "abandonware", nor have any of the games supported by MAME
passed out of copyright.

MAME is not intended to be used as a tool for mass copyright
infringement. Therefore, it is strongly against the authors' wishes to
sell, advertise, or link to resources that provide illegal copies of ROM,
CD, or hard disk images.


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IV. Derivative Works
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Derivative works are allowed under the MAME license. However, you are
discouraged from providing specific functionality that goes against the
philosophy of the MAME team. Specifically:

* Do not add games which are more recent than 3 years old, or which are
still being sold new by the company that produced them. MAME is not
intended to be a platform that competes with arcade games that are still
being actively sold.

* Do not provide a means of generating a list of games that specifically
identifies those games for which the user does not have image files. This
only encourages users to seek out sources for illegal ROM, CD, and hard
disk images in order to "complete" their collection.

* Do not remove the startup screen that contains information about why
certain non-working games don't work. This only serves to generate a
bunch of useless email traffic to the developers asking why the games
don't work.

Because the name MAME is trademarked, you must abide by the rules of the
trademark usage if you wish to use "MAME" as part of the name your
derivative work. In general, this means you must request permission,
which requires that you follow the guidelines above.

The version number of any derivative work should reflect the version
number of the MAME release it was derived from.


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V. Official Contact Information
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For questions regarding the MAME license, trademark, or other usage, go
to http://www.mamedev.org/