From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: =?UTF-8?B?YWzDrXJpbyBleW5n?= Subject: Re: MAME emulator is giving incentive to use non-free software Date: Sun, 3 Apr 2016 14:20:22 +0000 Message-ID: References: <20160402041955.484a1cb1@top-laptop> Reply-To: Workgroup for fully free GNU/Linux distributions Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Return-path: In-Reply-To: List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: gnu-linux-libre-bounces+gldg-gnu-linux-libre=m.gmane.org@nongnu.org Sender: gnu-linux-libre-bounces+gldg-gnu-linux-libre=m.gmane.org@nongnu.org Cc: guix-devel@gnu.org, gnu-linux-libre@nongnu.org List-Id: guix-devel.gnu.org i think i got the root of the controversy: some people started to think of emulators as hardware (replacements) hardware is useful to develop to some people started to think of emulators as obsolete apis obsolete apis are not useful to develop to i still see emulators (like ndiswrapper) as obsolete apis; without free applications that can't run natively they are useless and should be removed so the user doesn't run nonfree software by mistake unless they emulate current hardware (like qemu), in this case they are useful in themselves (don't need a free application that can't run natively), just being hardware replacements helping development wine is a exception to introduce free software in nonfree platforms the compromise is define _current hardware_ "MAME now documents a wide variety of (mostly vintage) computers"[1] _vintage_ seems undoubtly out _current hardware_ i also noticed i was conflating technical details i shouldn't my approach was to make an opt-out whitelist of free uses (mostly games) for packages with a nonfree community (mostly emulators like mame or wine) implemented with the package manager/filesystem [1]http://mamedev.org/