Re: MAME emulator is giving incentive to use non-free software

[Jean Louis <guix@rcdrun.com>]

Hello Taylan,

Thank you for bringing up your opinion and also issue with Nintendo
emulator.

My opinion is that such software shall not be included in free software
distribution. As using such emulators, also encourages users to ask for
support within free software community, and in that case, people are
going to answer like this:
https://trisquel.info/en/forum/can-i-get-games-wine-working-trisquel

which is basically dividing the community, you can see the Calinou,
answering with: "We won't assist you in running proprietary software of
any kind on this forum, it would violate our Community Guidelines."

Including a package that provides platform for non-free, even if there
are few free options, is enciting users to ask back for support. It will
cause many of pages where there will be problems and rejections of such
users. Why not make it clear from beginning, by not including such
emulators in free distributions.

Trademark issue:

I have reviewed somewhat nestopia source code, like this:
https://github.com/rdanbrook/nestopia/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=nintendo

and that software clearly uses the trademark that is protected:
http://www.nintendo.com/corp/copyright.jsp and without permission to be
used in such.

Further, author of software has taken care not to include on their
website any mention of Nintendo® trademark:
http://0ldsk00l.ca/nestopia/

However, your package definiton does uses trademark:

synopsis: Nintendo Entertainment System (NES/Famicom) emulator
description: Nestopia UE (Undead Edition) is a fork of the Nintendo
+ Entertainment System (NES/Famicom) emulator Nestopia, with
enhancements from members of the emulation community.  It provides highly accurate
emulation.

Does making whole package impossible to copy legally. It is not GPL or
free software any more. Your package definition is also not GPL or free
software, because it uses trademark that their owners did not give
permissions to be used in that manner.

The software package nestopia-ue is infected by the trademark.

Please see what I mean:
http://www.gnu.org/distros/free-system-distribution-guidelines.html#trademarks

The problem may arise from Nintendo, as they are owner of the
trademark.

For your understanding:

- I cannot just take your package definition and copy it on my website,
  because it includes trademark, it is simply not free description of
  the package. It asks for problems in future, with Nintendo. 

- I cannot sell the package or that software, neither provide support,
  in that shape or form, with the trademark Nintendo® because I don't
  have permission for that.

- a software definition cannot be just made up with trademarks,
  especially not with well known trademarks, and claimed to be GPL
  licensed

- software using trademarks within the source is also questionable.

My statements shall be verified by attorney, as I am only paralegal.

Jean Louis


On Tue, Mar 29, 2016 at 10:58:26AM +0200, Taylan Ulrich Bayırlı/Kammer wrote:
> For the record, we have a couple Nintendo emulators in games.scm.  In
> particular I packaged Nestopia and Mupen64Plus a while back, and was
> planning to add higan once I have a solution to its license issue...