From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic =?utf-8?Q?Court=C3=A8s?=) Subject: Re: MAME emulator is giving incentive to use non-free software Date: Tue, 29 Mar 2016 15:03:22 +0200 Message-ID: <87zithmo6d.fsf@gnu.org> References: <20160328215516.GA27719@protected.rcdrun.com> <87shzavz0y.fsf@netris.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Return-path: Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:49405) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1aktIw-0000GP-Cd for guix-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 29 Mar 2016 09:03:31 -0400 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1aktIs-0007oi-Dq for guix-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 29 Mar 2016 09:03:30 -0400 In-Reply-To: <87shzavz0y.fsf@netris.org> (Mark H. Weaver's message of "Mon, 28 Mar 2016 21:44:13 -0400") List-Id: "Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System distribution." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: guix-devel-bounces+gcggd-guix-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sender: guix-devel-bounces+gcggd-guix-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org To: Mark H Weaver Cc: guix-devel@gnu.org Mark H Weaver skribis: > Jean Louis writes: >> Put yourself in the view point of free software user. What such user is >> going to do with WINE? > > WINE has at least one useful purpose for a free software developer: to > help them develop and test Windows ports of their software compiled with > MingW. > > For example, it is important for GNU Guile to run on Windows because > programs that already depend on Guile (e.g. GNU Lilypond), and programs > that we hope will use Guile in the future (e.g. GNU Emacs) include ports > for Windows. The Windows ports of both of the aforementioned programs > are useful for introducing the free software movement to Windows users. I wondered about this at the time WINE was submitted and I came to the same conclusion: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2014-11/msg00333.html > MAME is a different case. FWIW, here's a Parabola ticket on the > question of MAME: > > https://labs.parabola.nu/issues/961 > > I'd like to know if there are any free programs that can be run under > MAME and cannot be run natively on GNU/Linux. Can anyone answer this > question? It would also be useful to know whether people are using/trying to use the hardware MAME emulates to run free software on it, whether there are reverse-engineering efforts that would likely benefit from it, etc. IOW, can we conceivably think of use cases other than running non-free games? Thanks, Ludo=E2=80=99.