MAME emulator is giving incentive to use non-free software

MAME emulator is giving incentive to use non-free software

[Jean Louis]

I have already sent request to FSF to review this issue. But here it is
for the list.

I am free software user. I don't want my children to find MAME on my
computer. I have 3 children. They will be using free software
distributions, with free software BIOS on free hardware.

I don't want my children to find MAME on computer. I don't want them to
search for software in GuixSD and find MAME, and later to find ROMs,
which are non-free.

Including MAME or any other emulator, even though non-free as such, if
such emulator is practically of no use to free software users without
non-free additions or parts, firmware, blobs, or ROMs, is giving
incentive to free software users to use non-free.

Put yourself in the view point of free software user. What such user is
going to do with WINE? What is he/she/it going to do practically with
MAME? Nothing. They will have no use of that software. Single cases are
exceptions. Exceptions may download it themselves, they don't need to
get it delivered by free software distribution of GNU.

My username is jmarciano. Please see discussion here:
https://gnunet.org/bot/log/guix/2016-03-28

I cannot believe that MAME and WINE and such emulators are to be
included in free software distributions. MAME clearly gives incentive to
use non-free software.

Further, that is hypocricy.

I am on GNU system due to non-free software. And according to these
guidelines here:
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-system-distribution-guidelines.html

there is, I cite:

"Please Teach Users about Free Software

To establish lasting freedom, just giving users freedom isn't
sufficient. It is necessary also to teach them to understand what it
means and to demand it.

I am asking you to review and correct if possible, the inclusion of
packages such as: WINE and MAME into GNU distribution GuixSD.

Everybody can download WINE and MAME onto their computers. There may be
legitimate reasons to use such software, but what about practical
results?

Enabling both WINE, MAME or any other emulator that requires non-free
software to run, or that helps non-free software to run on free GNU
distribution, is not in alignment with "teach them to understand what it
means and to demand it".

I am demanding it now.

Jean Louis

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

[Jookia]

On Mon, Mar 28, 2016 at 11:55:16PM +0200, Jean Louis wrote:
> I am free software user. I don't want my children to find MAME on my
> computer. I have 3 children. They will be using free software
> distributions, with free software BIOS on free hardware.
>
> I don't want my children to find MAME on computer. I don't want them to
> search for software in GuixSD and find MAME, and later to find ROMs,
> which are non-free.

There's a lot worse things they could be searching for, such as nonfree video
games or Skype. Guix gives them the freedom to package and install what they
want, so I guess that solution here is to teach them about nonfree software.

> Including MAME or any other emulator, even though non-free as such, if
> such emulator is practically of no use to free software users without
> non-free additions or parts, firmware, blobs, or ROMs, is giving
> incentive to free software users to use non-free.
>
> Put yourself in the view point of free software user. What such user is
> going to do with WINE? What is he/she/it going to do practically with
> MAME? Nothing. They will have no use of that software. Single cases are
> exceptions. Exceptions may download it themselves, they don't need to
> get it delivered by free software distribution of GNU.

One could argue this about free clients for websites that use nonfree
Javascript. MAME is finally free software, and I imagine it could be used for
teaching how computers work in a controlled environment for one. I think it's
extremely dangerous for us to decide what use software is for other people.

> My username is jmarciano. Please see discussion here:
> https://gnunet.org/bot/log/guix/2016-03-28

While Dave sums up reality, I was surprised to learn of interesting uses that I
hadn't thought of:

> <paroneayea>  about wine
> <paroneayea>  I recently had a friend use Wine to run an old copy of Blender
> <paroneayea>  which is free software
> <paroneayea>  because he couldn't get the ancient version of blender
>               to load in any modern gnu/linux distro

I was even more surprised that MAME *is used for educational purposes* without
any ROMs at all:

> <rain1>	MAME's purpose is to preserve decades of software history. As
>         electronic technology continues to rush forward, MAME prevents this
>         important \"vintage\" software from being lost and forgotten. This is
>         achieved by documenting the hardware and how it functions. The source
>         code to MAME serves as this documentation

This also makes me wonder whether it'd be interesting to include free ROMs, like
Unix for the PDP-11.

> I cannot believe that MAME and WINE and such emulators are to be
> included in free software distributions. MAME clearly gives incentive to
> use non-free software.

Wine is probably one of the most important pieces of software we have for
liberating software. For instance, I can take free software that only runs on
Windows that's too hard to immediately port to GNU/Linux and run it, or begin a
transitional porting effort using Winelib.

Furthermore, this could be vital to running programs needed to bootstrap old
tools in the future, which Chris Webber alluded to.

> I am asking you to review and correct if possible, the inclusion of
> packages such as: WINE and MAME into GNU distribution GuixSD.
>
> Everybody can download WINE and MAME onto their computers. There may be
> legitimate reasons to use such software, but what about practical
> results?

How about we don't worry about what people can use software for but rather what
the software is? I have a feeling this email isn't going to satisfy you at all,
so I think the solution is to not use GuixSD or any system that gives people
freedom to run whatever software they want for whatever purpose they want.

> Jean Louis

Jookia.

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

[Mark H Weaver]

Hi,

I haven't yet looked closely at MAME, but for now I wanted to address
the question of WINE.

Jean Louis <guix@rcdrun.com> 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 would also note that WINE is included in both Trisquel and Parabola.

* * * * *

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?

     Thanks,
       Mark

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

[Jean Louis]

For further thinkering, for those people who shoule be deciding what
software shall be included in free software distribution and what not,
here are some arguments:

Guidelines, read them well, especially sections such as "Nonfree
Firmware", then section "Trademarks", and "Please Teach Users about Free
Software": 
http://www.gnu.org/distros/free-system-distribution-guidelines.html

List of software that does not respect the Free System Distribution
Guidelines (this is work in progress):
https://libreplanet.org/wiki/List_of_software_that_does_not_respect_the_Free_System_Distribution_Guidelines

What is going on at Trisquel:
https://trisquel.info/en/wiki/software-does-not-respect-free-system-distribution-guidelines

At the Trisquel link, one can see "Mac-on-Linux emulator":
Description: Allows running MacOS inside a GNU/Linux system,
Problem: Only runs/supports proprietary software
Recommended Fix: Remove program/package
(Source) package name(s): mol, mol-drivers-linux
Trisquel Status: Fixed (removed upstream)

Compare the above to MAME issue, as it is similar.

Now is the time to think. It will be late in 3-5 years to correct
mistakes:

- decision to include MAME in a free GNU distribution directly
  influences users to use non-free software and promotes non-free
  software 

- the argument "let us search for one free software ROM" to justify the
  inclusion of MAME in such free distribution is one-sided, and does not
  foresee the future results. As MAME is made exclusively with the
  purpose to support non-free software, the practical future result is
  that people will be guided to download and use non-free ROMs,

- free software distribution shall not offer a platform for conservancy
  of non-free software for future,

- it can be clearly seen that website of MAME: http://mamedev.org/
  offers under Download section, non-free ROMs:
  http://mamedev.org/roms/ (disregard their definiton of "free" as they
  are not)

- why would free software distribution support and include software that
  was primarily made for usage of non-free software?! Single fact that
  such software is free does not demand and promote usage of free
  software. See Guidelines.

- MAME® is a U.S. registered trademark, that may be found with the
  USPTO:
  http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/gate.exe?f=login&p_lang=english&p_d=trmk
  by searching for: MAME, serial number: 78578919, where it says:

  Goods and Services      IC 009. US 021 023 026 036 038. G & S:
  Downloadable computer software that enables the emulation of arcade
  games and their associated hardware, allowing them to run on a general
  purpose computer operating system. FIRST USE: 19981100. FIRST USE IN
  COMMERCE: 19981100

  Owner     (REGISTRANT) Salmoria, Nicola

  And the owner, clearly says on the website: http://mamedev.org/
  "Please note that MAME is a registered trademark of Nicola Salmoria,
  and permission is required to use the "MAME" name, logo or wordmark. "
  which makes the whole software package under that name (MAME®) non-free and
  incompatible with GPL 2.0 -- for example, I cannot sell MAME package
  that I would get from GuixSD, as I would be required special
  permission to use MAME® trademark.

- or Nicola Salmoria could make to the distribution something like what
  KIK INTERACTIVE INC. did to kik package with the NPM:
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11341491 and trademark issues are
  the exact reason why some other packages are not included or have been
  forked

- using MAME is endorsement for the use of non-free ROMs, even if there
  would be 1-2 free ROMs, people would come to MAME website and download
  non-free ROMs.

Regarding Wine:

- Wine website is constantly endorsing non-free software, what is easy
  to see from their News: https://www.winehq.org/announce/1.9.6 as they
  develop the software to run non-free software, I guess mostly for
  gamers, who don't care about free software philosophy.

- for that same reason I would reject Wine in ALL free software
  distributions.

- single fact that some piece of software is free software, shall not be
  the only factor to consider inclusion of software in free software
  distribution.

- Wine is not "freedom respecting" software (see guidelines), and as
  such, does not demand, rather it encourages users to use non-free
  software.

- few exceptional cases may exceptionally download it and run for their
  exceptional uses in the non-free world, without inclusion of Wine in
  the free software distribution.

All written above are my opinion, and not legal advices.

Jean Louis

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

[Jookia]

Hey again,

I think this is an interesting discussion, so let's deal with facts rather than
speculation.

On Tue, Mar 29, 2016 at 06:42:43AM +0200, Jean Louis wrote:
> - decision to include MAME in a free GNU distribution directly
>   influences users to use non-free software and promotes non-free
>   software

I just read through the website and see no mention of this. No nonfree software
is endorsed or mentioned, only talk of preserving history and documenting
hardware.

I do see this however in the FAQ:

"Each version of MAME includes support for additional games. If you run MAME
with the -listfull option, it will display a list of all supported games."

I'm not sure if listing support is endorsement. Wine also has its AppDB for
compatibility. There's certainly no push that you should use it for this, but
rather than it's capable of running these tools.

> - the argument "let us search for one free software ROM" to justify the
>   inclusion of MAME in such free distribution is one-sided, and does not
>   foresee the future results. As MAME is made exclusively with the
>   purpose to support non-free software, the practical future result is
>   that people will be guided to download and use non-free ROMs,

We could apply this argument to firmware updaters too. In fact I have in the
past, but we have things like Libreboot and ColorHug which while aren't popular,
are free and useful for our tools.


> - it can be clearly seen that website of MAME: http://mamedev.org/
>   offers under Download section, non-free ROMs:
>   http://mamedev.org/roms/ (disregard their definiton of "free" as they
>   are not)

This is problematic.

> - why would free software distribution support and include software that
>   was primarily made for usage of non-free software?! Single fact that
>   such software is free does not demand and promote usage of free
>   software. See Guidelines.

"MAME main purpose is to be a refefence to the inner workings of the emulated
machines. This is done both for educational purposes and for preservation
purposes, in order to prevent historical software from disappearing forever once
the hardware it runs on stops working. Of course, in order to preserve the
software and demonstrate that the emulated behavior matches the original, you
must also be able to actually use the software. 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."

However,

"To operate, the emulator requires images of the original ROMs, CDs, hard disks
or other media from the machines, which must be provided by the user. No
portions of the original game code are included in the executable."

Regardless of intentions, is MAME useful without these ROMs?

> - MAME® is a U.S. registered trademark, that may be found with the
>   And the owner, clearly says on the website: http://mamedev.org/
>   "Please note that MAME is a registered trademark of Nicola Salmoria,
>   and permission is required to use the "MAME" name, logo or wordmark. "
>   which makes the whole software package under that name (MAME®) non-free and
>   incompatible with GPL 2.0 -- for example, I cannot sell MAME package
>   that I would get from GuixSD, as I would be required special
>   permission to use MAME® trademark.

This is problematic, but rebranding isn't out of the question.

> Regarding Wine:
>
> - Wine website is constantly endorsing non-free software, what is easy
>   to see from their News: https://www.winehq.org/announce/1.9.6 as they
>   develop the software to run non-free software, I guess mostly for
>   gamers, who don't care about free software philosophy.
>
> - for that same reason I would reject Wine in ALL free software
>   distributions.
>
> - Wine is not "freedom respecting" software (see guidelines), and as
>   such, does not demand, rather it encourages users to use non-free
>   software.

Same arguments as above, though I don't see Wine endorsing nonfree software. In
fact it's importantly used to make free software development easier as I and
Mark Weaver mentioned in a previous email.

> Jean Louis

Jookia.

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

[Jean Louis]

Hello,

- when a package definition includes "Homepage to: http://mamedev.org/"
  then GuixSD is endorsing and referencing non-free software for which
  MAME was made, while you maybe refer to software package alone.

- if developers include MAME, WINE and other emulators that are
  basically foundation to run non-free software, they will be definitely
  dividing people, just as non-free software is dividing people.

Let us see example of "dividing people":

https://trisquel.info/en/forum/can-i-get-games-wine-working-trisquel

A user have seen there is Wine in Trisquel, and of course, asks for
support. The answer is: "We won't assist you in running proprietary
software of any kind on this forum, it would violate our Community
Guidelines." -- which is clearly dividing people. It is rejecting the
user.

People get involved into discussion of running or not running non-free
software:
https://trisquel.info/en/forum/some-wonderings-wine-and-playonlinux

The guy has used Wine to write documentation, but he could as well then
use it without inclusion in the distribution:
https://trisquel.info/en/forum/wine-even-useful-anything-other-proprietary-software

There is whole list of supposedly "free software" that runs on Wine:
https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?bIsQueue=false&bIsRejected=false&sClass=application&sTitle=Browse+Applications&sReturnTo=&iId=0&iItemsPerPage=25&iPage=1&iappVersion-licenseOp0=5&sappVersion-licenseData0=Open+Source&sOrderBy=appName&bAscending=true&iItemsPerPage=200

However such list is deceptive. If user follows the development of Wine,
user is going to see or browse package definitions, will see the Wine
website and then numerous numerous pointers to non-free software:
https://appdb.winehq.org/index.php (let me know if you fail to see the
thumbnails of non-free games in the Platinum list or any of the
thumbnails in the Gold list or Silver list).

It is free software package that is made to support non-free
packages. It should not be included in free software distributions,
because free software distributions shall not point, reference and
otherwise distribute software that helps the majority of users to run
non-free software.

Inclusion of homepage of Wine in the package definition is endorsing
platforms (Wine) to run non-free software. Who wish to run it, is
free. Software is free, right? But why would that need to be included in
any free software distribution?!

The reason is:

- it is going to definitely reject people, and cause community support
  problems. Look into the future. There will be 100, 500, 5000 and
  50,000 users in the future, maybe 100,000 and later million users.

- when thinking of future, users will come who have downloaded MAME,
  they will discuss on forums, in mailing lists, in bug reports,
  something like: "How can I run this ROM?" or "How can I ran World of
  Warcraft?" -- and what are you going to tell people then? Please, go
  elsewhere, because we don't run free software and don't give support
  for free software. That is dividing people. Obviously Wine/Mame and
  any other emulator is problematic for future of the communities.

I cannot understand the rationalization and justifications based on the
single fact how WINE/MAME or other similar emulators are free software
by themselves, and that is the only reason to include them, but let us
avoid all the reality about that, that those platforms are being
developed for the major purpose of running non-free software. It does
not play alone. It is hypocrisy.

Jean Louis

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

[Jookia]

On Tue, Mar 29, 2016 at 09:30:40AM +0200, Jean Louis wrote:
> I cannot understand the rationalization and justifications based on the
> single fact how WINE/MAME or other similar emulators are free software
> by themselves, and that is the only reason to include them, but let us
> avoid all the reality about that, that those platforms are being
> developed for the major purpose of running non-free software. It does
> not play alone. It is hypocrisy.

I think this might be my last email since they don't seem to be forming any kind
of discussion, so I'll leave this question: Should we ship Linux-libre with
virtualization support? From what I know there's only a handful of systems out
there that can run it without proprietary blobs in its BIOS updates. What about
virtualization with PCI passthrough support, primarily used for video games?

> Jean Louis

Jookia.

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

[Taylan Ulrich Bayırlı/Kammer]

Jean Louis <guix@rcdrun.com> writes:

> [...]
>
> Including MAME or any other emulator, even though non-free as such, if
> such emulator is practically of no use to free software users without
> non-free additions or parts, firmware, blobs, or ROMs, is giving
> incentive to free software users to use non-free.
>
> [...]

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...

These would have to go as well I suppose, if MAME will have to go.
They're clearly for playing non-free games, at least as far as I'm
concerned.

I don't have a strong opinion on the outcome of this.  Gaming is one
thing where I personally tolerate non-free software out of a lack of
meaningful alternatives.  (The artistic value of a well-made video game
cannot be duplicated, in contrast to its technical features as software,
which can be re-implemented.)  Having such emulators in the main package
repository is convenient for people like me, but I can't demand for this
to be supported by the project.


By the way, I'm no parenting expert, but I know that if I tried to
prohibit my child siblings from using their smartphones, tablets,
MS Windows laptops, and PlayStation, for playing non-free games and
using non-free software based services like YouTube, it would seem like
a stupid limitation to them "because everyone else does it" and they
would just go to their friends to do these things anyway.  It would just
not work.

Taylan

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

[Jean Louis]

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...

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

[rain1]

On 2016-03-29 09:25, Jookia wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 29, 2016 at 09:30:40AM +0200, Jean Louis wrote:
>> I cannot understand the rationalization and justifications based on 
>> the
>> single fact how WINE/MAME or other similar emulators are free software
>> by themselves, and that is the only reason to include them, but let us
>> avoid all the reality about that, that those platforms are being
>> developed for the major purpose of running non-free software. It does
>> not play alone. It is hypocrisy.
> 
> I think this might be my last email since they don't seem to be forming 
> any kind
> of discussion, so I'll leave this question: Should we ship Linux-libre 
> with
> virtualization support? From what I know there's only a handful of 
> systems out
> there that can run it without proprietary blobs in its BIOS updates. 
> What about
> virtualization with PCI passthrough support, primarily used for video 
> games?
> 
>> Jean Louis
> 
> Jookia.

I guess I should say a couple things since this all came about when I 
mentioned I packaged MAME 
<https://notabug.org/rain1/pkgs/src/master/rain/mame.scm> for guix, 
since it recently switched to GPL2.

My opinion on this is pretty simple: MAME is free software.

I don't mind if it goes into guix packages tree or not - to be honest it 
doesn't seem that great an idea. The compile time is huge and the output 
is a 160MB binary. That would use up resources from build farms that 
could be better spent on core libraries like libc, gcrypt, openssl, ...

MAME, Wine, Qemu and GNU/linux-libre all have the following in common: 
You can use them to run non free software. While they can all also be 
used to run free software I don't think this is important. Here's why: 
The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0).

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

[Jean Louis]

On Tue, Mar 29, 2016 at 12:35:12PM +0100, rain1@openmailbox.org wrote:
> MAME, Wine, Qemu and GNU/linux-libre all have the following in common: You
> can use them to run non free software. While they can all also be used to
> run free software I don't think this is important. Here's why: The freedom
> to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0).

OK, please remember, I discuss this in friendly manner, totally separate
from other subjects. It is not personal. I wish that people get
awareness of what means pushing free software into society.

I do feel that in GuixSD, since yesterday, there is lack of the
understanding what means truly free software. When Trademark issue is
not recognized over MAME® trademark, I also see that there is lack of
legal advice. Person who owns trademark may impose future restrictions
on software even demand moneys for sales of such. So that issue is
separate to be handled if MAME is included in GuixSD.

Including a package such as MAME is convenient for gamers, but does not
push free software into the society. People who make free software
distributions shall undertand that important responsibility.

Did you read the guidelines?
http://www.gnu.org/distros/free-system-distribution-guidelines.html

Cite:

"What would be unacceptable is for the documentation to give people
instructions for installing a nonfree program on the system, or mention
conveniences they might gain by doing so."

Does README.md here, belongs to documentation? I think it does.
https://github.com/mamedev/mame

Does it encite users to use non-free software by "preserving decades of
software history"? It does.

Does it give incentive to users by "Where can I find out more?" to come
to the official website and does the official website offer any free
software? No, they don't. They offer ROMs, which cannot be even copied.

Does then GuixSD gives incentive by distributing MAME to users, to use
non-free software? Absolutely yes.

Are users of MAME who ask for support within that community to run MAME,
going to be divided because they will not get support truly, but they
will rather be rejected with "sorry, we don't support proprietary
installations of ROMs" -- yes, it will happen, just as it is already
happening with Trisquel.

I use free software and I am free and fine with it. I am not using free
software to have 2 faces or to recommend to others non-free software.

For that reason that MAME gives incentive to majority of users to use
non-free software, it shall not be included in distribution.

Jean Louis

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

[Nils Gillmann]

Jean Louis <guix@rcdrun.com> writes:

> Hello,
>
> - when a package definition includes "Homepage to: http://mamedev.org/"
>   then GuixSD is endorsing and referencing non-free software for which
>   MAME was made, while you maybe refer to software package alone.
>
> - if developers include MAME, WINE and other emulators that are
>   basically foundation to run non-free software, they will be definitely
>   dividing people, just as non-free software is dividing people.
>
> Let us see example of "dividing people":
>
> https://trisquel.info/en/forum/can-i-get-games-wine-working-trisquel
>
> A user have seen there is Wine in Trisquel, and of course, asks for
> support. The answer is: "We won't assist you in running proprietary
> software of any kind on this forum, it would violate our Community
> Guidelines." -- which is clearly dividing people. It is rejecting the
> user.
>
> People get involved into discussion of running or not running non-free
> software:
> https://trisquel.info/en/forum/some-wonderings-wine-and-playonlinux
>
> The guy has used Wine to write documentation, but he could as well then
> use it without inclusion in the distribution:
> https://trisquel.info/en/forum/wine-even-useful-anything-other-proprietary-software
>
> There is whole list of supposedly "free software" that runs on Wine:
> https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?bIsQueue=false&bIsRejected=false&sClass=application&sTitle=Browse+Applications&sReturnTo=&iId=0&iItemsPerPage=25&iPage=1&iappVersion-licenseOp0=5&sappVersion-licenseData0=Open+Source&sOrderBy=appName&bAscending=true&iItemsPerPage=200
>
> However such list is deceptive. If user follows the development of Wine,
> user is going to see or browse package definitions, will see the Wine
> website and then numerous numerous pointers to non-free software:
> https://appdb.winehq.org/index.php (let me know if you fail to see the
> thumbnails of non-free games in the Platinum list or any of the
> thumbnails in the Gold list or Silver list).
>
> It is free software package that is made to support non-free
> packages. It should not be included in free software distributions,
> because free software distributions shall not point, reference and
> otherwise distribute software that helps the majority of users to run
> non-free software.
>
> Inclusion of homepage of Wine in the package definition is endorsing
> platforms (Wine) to run non-free software. Who wish to run it, is
> free. Software is free, right? But why would that need to be included in
> any free software distribution?!

I include (home-page) in packages because I see it just as useful
data associated with the software I packaged.

> The reason is:
>
> - it is going to definitely reject people, and cause community support
>   problems. Look into the future. There will be 100, 500, 5000 and
>   50,000 users in the future, maybe 100,000 and later million users.
>
> - when thinking of future, users will come who have downloaded MAME,
>   they will discuss on forums, in mailing lists, in bug reports,
>   something like: "How can I run this ROM?" or "How can I ran World of
>   Warcraft?" -- and what are you going to tell people then? Please, go
>   elsewhere, because we don't run free software and don't give support
>   for free software. That is dividing people. Obviously Wine/Mame and
>   any other emulator is problematic for future of the communities.

If we drop it, there will be very likely inofficial repositories
carrying it, like there are now for custom packaged non-free
software. And those people will end up coming to our chat and
lists, and we have to deal with it somehow in distancing us very
clearly from third party packages (if not already done so).

Also, I don't see those questions regulary on other distros I
ran/was part of. Almost no one asked about how to run certain games
or emulator parts.. But that might just be my experience.

> I cannot understand the rationalization and justifications based on the
> single fact how WINE/MAME or other similar emulators are free software
> by themselves, and that is the only reason to include them, but let us
> avoid all the reality about that, that those platforms are being
> developed for the major purpose of running non-free software. It does
> not play alone. It is hypocrisy.
>
> Jean Louis
>
>

-- 
ng
personal contact: http://krosos.sdf.org
EDN: https://wiki.c3d2.de/EDN

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

[Nils Gillmann]

Jean Louis <guix@rcdrun.com> writes:

> On Tue, Mar 29, 2016 at 12:35:12PM +0100, rain1@openmailbox.org wrote:
>> MAME, Wine, Qemu and GNU/linux-libre all have the following in common: You
>> can use them to run non free software. While they can all also be used to
>> run free software I don't think this is important. Here's why: The freedom
>> to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0).
>
> OK, please remember, I discuss this in friendly manner, totally separate
> from other subjects. It is not personal. I wish that people get
> awareness of what means pushing free software into society.
>
> I do feel that in GuixSD, since yesterday, there is lack of the
> understanding what means truly free software. When Trademark issue is
> not recognized over MAME® trademark, I also see that there is lack of
> legal advice. Person who owns trademark may impose future restrictions
> on software even demand moneys for sales of such. So that issue is
> separate to be handled if MAME is included in GuixSD.

From some message in the thread I asssume that you have a legal
background in your job?
What's civodul's opinion on this? Should we CC rms and/or some
legal related gnu list on this? I think potential trademark issue
if they can be prevented before they happen are serious enough to
discuss.

The trademark question is the only thing I follow at the moment,
I have no time to respond more in detail about the other topics.

> Including a package such as MAME is convenient for gamers, but does not
> push free software into the society. People who make free software
> distributions shall undertand that important responsibility.
>
> Did you read the guidelines?
> http://www.gnu.org/distros/free-system-distribution-guidelines.html
>
> Cite:
>
> "What would be unacceptable is for the documentation to give people
> instructions for installing a nonfree program on the system, or mention
> conveniences they might gain by doing so."
>
> Does README.md here, belongs to documentation? I think it does.
> https://github.com/mamedev/mame
>
> Does it encite users to use non-free software by "preserving decades of
> software history"? It does.
>
> Does it give incentive to users by "Where can I find out more?" to come
> to the official website and does the official website offer any free
> software? No, they don't. They offer ROMs, which cannot be even copied.
>
> Does then GuixSD gives incentive by distributing MAME to users, to use
> non-free software? Absolutely yes.
>
> Are users of MAME who ask for support within that community to run MAME,
> going to be divided because they will not get support truly, but they
> will rather be rejected with "sorry, we don't support proprietary
> installations of ROMs" -- yes, it will happen, just as it is already
> happening with Trisquel.
>
> I use free software and I am free and fine with it. I am not using free
> software to have 2 faces or to recommend to others non-free software.
>
> For that reason that MAME gives incentive to majority of users to use
> non-free software, it shall not be included in distribution.
>
> Jean Louis
>
>

-- 
ng
personal contact: http://krosos.sdf.org
EDN: https://wiki.c3d2.de/EDN

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

[Ludovic Courtès]

Mark H Weaver <mhw@netris.org> skribis:

> Jean Louis <guix@rcdrun.com> 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’.

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

[Ludovic Courtès]

Jean Louis <guix@rcdrun.com> skribis:

> 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.

I respectfully think that this interpretation is incorrect.

GPL software is certainly free, trademark or not.

The FSDG item linked above is implicitly concerned with trademarks that
relate to the name of the software package, as is the case with Firefox
and (apparently) MAME.  These are free software packages, but we may not
be allowed to distribute them under these names.  We still get the 4
freedoms, obviously, as long as changing the name is trivial (for
instance Firefox has a ‘configure’ switch for that.)

IIUC, the Nintendo emulators we’re talking about mention “Nintendo” in
their synopsis, but that is most likely a legitimate use of the
trademark—just like mentions of “Intel”, the “X Window System”, etc.

IMO, a valid reason why we could discuss exclusion of these packages is
if they do not have any other use than playing non-free games.  I guess
this is an important use case, but I don’t know if it’s the only one.

Thoughts?

Ludo’.

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

[Jean Louis]

Hello Ludovic,

You do need legal counsel my friend. I suggest you ask for help of few
attorneys from FSF to help you with understanding on what trademarks are
and how they can be used to demand control over their rights.

Nintendo trademark in the package is certainly wrong. Not even the
author is advertising in that manner the package. Did you go to author's
page to see that there is no trace of "Nintendo" on the page?

The point is of legal nature. It is not based on opinions.

I have given you enough clues by which you can seek legal counsel and
true legal advice.

Keep in mind, by this way, "Nintedo Emulator" is still endagering GuixSD
system as such, including all other users who wish to copy it, as it is
open to attacks. Same with MAME. That is of enough clue to be concerned
and to ask truly legal advice. I am paralegal assisting attorneys in
registration of trademarks.

For sake of responsibility of what is distributed and understanding how
it can affect multiple people worldwide, it is better doing what I am
suggesting. Seek advice.

Jean Louis

On Tue, Mar 29, 2016 at 03:14:32PM +0200, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
> > 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.
> 
> I respectfully think that this interpretation is incorrect.
> 
> GPL software is certainly free, trademark or not.
> 
> The FSDG item linked above is implicitly concerned with trademarks that
> relate to the name of the software package, as is the case with Firefox
> and (apparently) MAME.  These are free software packages, but we may not
> be allowed to distribute them under these names.  We still get the 4
> freedoms, obviously, as long as changing the name is trivial (for
> instance Firefox has a ‘configure’ switch for that.)
> 
> IIUC, the Nintendo emulators we’re talking about mention “Nintendo” in
> their synopsis, but that is most likely a legitimate use of the
> trademark—just like mentions of “Intel”, the “X Window System”, etc.
> 
> IMO, a valid reason why we could discuss exclusion of these packages is
> if they do not have any other use than playing non-free games.  I guess
> this is an important use case, but I don’t know if it’s the only one.
> 
> Thoughts?
> 
> Ludo’.

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

[Jean Louis]

Hello Nils,

On Tue, Mar 29, 2016 at 02:41:54PM +0200, Nils Gillmann wrote:
> If we drop it, there will be very likely inofficial repositories
> carrying it, like there are now for custom packaged non-free
> software. And those people will end up coming to our chat and
> lists, and we have to deal with it somehow in distancing us very
> clearly from third party packages (if not already done so).

That is because basic guidlines of GuixSD are missing. And people surely
come for the convenience but miss to understand what it means to
distribute free software.

I am now more aware of that. There is absolutely no legal background in
accepting packages for distribution, which means developers lack
understanding of it.

It is not possible to be a programmer and attorney in the same
time. Qualified people, probably from FSF, shall assist in solving
trademark issues, as there is no point giving links if those who make
software packages, and those who accept it, do not have a process of
legal approval.

For example, I guess there is absolutely no point in reading this text
here over Nintendo® trademarks:
https://www.nintendo.com/corp/legal.jsp#emulator because those who
accept packages they simply think it is alright to do what they do, and
their opinions and knowledge lack any clues of trademark laws.

Jean Lous

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

[Mathieu Lirzin]

Hi,

Jean Louis <guix@rcdrun.com> writes:

> On Tue, Mar 29, 2016 at 12:35:12PM +0100, rain1@openmailbox.org wrote:
>> MAME, Wine, Qemu and GNU/linux-libre all have the following in common: You
>> can use them to run non free software. While they can all also be used to
>> run free software I don't think this is important. Here's why: The freedom
>> to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0).
>
> OK, please remember, I discuss this in friendly manner, totally separate
> from other subjects. It is not personal. I wish that people get
> awareness of what means pushing free software into society.
>
> I do feel that in GuixSD, since yesterday, there is lack of the
> understanding what means truly free software. 

When talking to people contributing to a GNU project which consists of a
FSDG compliant package manager and distribution, this is not good
communication to suggest that “they” don't understand the true meaning
of Free Software.  I think it would be better to just say that according
to your interpretation of FSDG, Guix should not distribute MAME.

> Cite:
>
> "What would be unacceptable is for the documentation to give people
> instructions for installing a nonfree program on the system, or mention
> conveniences they might gain by doing so."
>
> Does README.md here, belongs to documentation? I think it does.
> https://github.com/mamedev/mame

The FSDG refers to documentation provided by the distribution not
upstream.  If upstream does include some documentation or description
not compliant with FSDG then Guix will not distribute such piece.

> I use free software and I am free and fine with it. I am not using free
> software to have 2 faces or to recommend to others non-free software.

MAME is Free Software.  If MAME has required non-free ROMs to run then
it will not be possible to distribute it and comply with FSDG, however
it seems that MAME can be run with free ROMs and does not suggest
installing non-free code when running it.

I have no interest in MAME, but refusing to distribute it makes
assumption about what people are going to use it for.  The fact that
apparently “most” people are running non-free stuff on top of it, is not
a valid argument in term of software freedom or compliance with FSDG.
It could be valid for other ethical issues but IMO Guix should focus
only on Free Software ethics.

Does it make sense?

-- 
Mathieu Lirzin

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

[Nils Gillmann]

Jean Louis <guix@rcdrun.com> writes:

> Hello Nils,
>
> On Tue, Mar 29, 2016 at 02:41:54PM +0200, Nils Gillmann wrote:
>> If we drop it, there will be very likely inofficial repositories
>> carrying it, like there are now for custom packaged non-free
>> software. And those people will end up coming to our chat and
>> lists, and we have to deal with it somehow in distancing us very
>> clearly from third party packages (if not already done so).
>
> That is because basic guidlines of GuixSD are missing.

I disagree, we have guidelines:
https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/manual/html_node/Packaging-Guidelines.html

I said there will be inofficial repositories, because that's what
already is the case for for example bio info software, or private
collections of packages, things which will never be merged into
guix master because of licensing issues.

For example Gentoo has so called overlays, official ones and
inofficial ones. If I remember corrently, they distance
themselves from any non-portage software very strongly and for
project oriented official overlays the projects (like KDE-project
of gentoo) have their freedom to point out if and where they can
get suppport.

You can't prevent packages being written and made available
somewhere out of the project. That's the only thing I meant to
say, nothing else.

> And people surely
> come for the convenience but miss to understand what it means to
> distribute free software.
>
> I am now more aware of that. There is absolutely no legal background in
> accepting packages for distribution, which means developers lack
> understanding of it.
>
> It is not possible to be a programmer and attorney in the same
> time.
> Qualified people, probably from FSF, shall assist in solving
> trademark issues, as there is no point giving links if those who make
> software packages, and those who accept it, do not have a process of
> legal approval.
>
> For example, I guess there is absolutely no point in reading this text
> here over Nintendo® trademarks:
> https://www.nintendo.com/corp/legal.jsp#emulator because those who
> accept packages they simply think it is alright to do what they do, and
> their opinions and knowledge lack any clues of trademark laws.
>
> Jean Lous
>
>

-- 
ng
personal contact: http://krosos.sdf.org
EDN: https://wiki.c3d2.de/EDN

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

[Jean Louis]

Hello Mathieu,

On Tue, Mar 29, 2016 at 04:23:15PM +0200, Mathieu Lirzin wrote:
> When talking to people contributing to a GNU project which consists of a
> FSDG compliant package manager and distribution, this is not good
> communication to suggest that “they” don't understand the true meaning
> of Free Software.  I think it would be better to just say that according
> to your interpretation of FSDG, Guix should not distribute MAME.

I agree, and I expressed only my opinions, yes.

> I have no interest in MAME, but refusing to distribute it makes
> assumption about what people are going to use it for.  The fact that
> apparently “most” people are running non-free stuff on top of it, is not
> a valid argument in term of software freedom or compliance with FSDG.
> It could be valid for other ethical issues but IMO Guix should focus
> only on Free Software ethics.

I am find if it is going to be solved by a compliance officer.

I can assume you have verified it for compliance. Please also reconsider
if than free software distribution shall include malware GPL licensed
software, because we cannot know neither assume that people are going to
use it for malware purposes, even though it is malware.

And how is MAME teaching people about free software? This section of
FSDG to me does not appear in alignment with your conclusions.

Observe also the trademark issues that I have mentioned, and compare to
Mac Os on Linux package, removed due to running only proprietary
software:

https://libreplanet.org/wiki/List_of_software_that_does_not_respect_the_Free_System_Distribution_Guidelines#Monkey.27s_Audio_Codec

and
https://savannah.nongnu.org/bugs/index.php?28332



Jean Louis

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

[Ludovic Courtès]

Jean Louis <guix@rcdrun.com> skribis:

> Nintendo trademark in the package is certainly wrong. Not even the
> author is advertising in that manner the package. Did you go to author's
> page to see that there is no trace of "Nintendo" on the page?
>
> The point is of legal nature. It is not based on opinions.

Understood.  At any rate, this is easily worked around: at worst, we use
explicit statements like “unofficial Nintendo Foobar emulator” or remove
the word “Nintendo” altogether.

Ludo’.

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

[Ludovic Courtès]

Jean Louis <guix@rcdrun.com> skribis:

> On Tue, Mar 29, 2016 at 04:23:15PM +0200, Mathieu Lirzin wrote:

[...]

>> I have no interest in MAME, but refusing to distribute it makes
>> assumption about what people are going to use it for.  The fact that
>> apparently “most” people are running non-free stuff on top of it, is not
>> a valid argument in term of software freedom or compliance with FSDG.
>> It could be valid for other ethical issues but IMO Guix should focus
>> only on Free Software ethics.
>
> I am find if it is going to be solved by a compliance officer.

There’s compliance officer going to tell us whether a proposed extension
to the FSDG is good or not.  The FSDG are community rules, not a law.

The right thing to do IMO is to discuss those rules here and on
gnu-linux-libre, where other free distro people and FSF staff are
reading.

Ludo’.

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

[alírio eyng]

these are the approaches i can think:
*extremely conservative (eliminating false positive errors)[1]
 removing all emulators
*conservative (eliminating false positive errors)[1]
 make packages/executables like game1-emulator1, game1-emulator2, ...
and not allowing direct emulator installation/execution
*liberal (avoiding false positive errors[1] and false negative errors[2])
 allowing all emulators with free games know
*extremely liberal (eliminating false negative errors)[2]
 allowing all emulators

extremely liberal is naive because it just looks down in the
dependency dag, there's no reason to not look up
extremely conservative is naive because it doesn't allow completely free uses
conservative would solve the issues that originate this thread
liberal is more convenient in some cases

i consider conservative better, liberal ok, and any of the extremes unreasonable

fsdg doesn't allow extremely liberal (according to other people
interpretation), in ndiswrapper, for example:
"with one exception, all ndis drivers are nonfree--and the one free
one is a windows port of a native linux driver. so right now, this
isn't useful for anything besides using nonfree software"[3]

parabola follows extremely conservative with your-freedom_emu[4]

assuming we choose conservative; for wine, we can make guile-wine,
emacs-wine[5] and gnutls-wine[6], but remove wine

it seems there's at least one free game needing an emulator[7]

i think this is a discussion about fsdg[8] and we should discuss it at
gnu-linux-libre@nongnu.org

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/false_positives_and_false_negatives#False_positive_error
[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/false_positives_and_false_negatives#False_negative_error
[3]https://libreplanet.org/wiki/List_of_software_that_does_not_respect_the_Free_System_Distribution_Guidelines
[4]https://www.parabola.nu/packages/libre/any/your-freedom_emu/
[5]https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2016-03/msg01216.html
[6]https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2014-11/msg00333.html
[7]http://pineight.com/lu/
[8]http://www.gnu.org/distros/free-system-distribution-guidelines.html

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

[Jean Louis]

Hello,

On Tue, Mar 29, 2016 at 06:15:43PM +0200, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
> There’s compliance officer going to tell us whether a proposed extension
> to the FSDG is good or not.  The FSDG are community rules, not a law.

When I referred to legality, that was in regards to trademark issues, as
Nintendo® and MAME® are registered trademarks with US Patent and
Trademark Office.

Nintendo is very aggressive towards protecting their rights, as you can
see on the links:

https://www.nintendo.com/corp/legal.jsp#emulator

And you can see on simple search that Nintendo is really doing that:

https://duckduckgo.com/html?q=nintendo+emulator+infringement&t=gnu

If a package is included in the GuixSD distribution that is named as
below, it clearly uses trademark in such manner that it can be
attacked.

That is what you need to check with attorneys, to either confirm what I
am claiming, or reject my claims. Do you understand?

guix package --show=nestopia-ue
name: nestopia-ue
version: 1.46.2
outputs: out
systems: x86_64-linux i686-linux armhf-linux mips64el-linux
dependencies: ao-1.2.0 glu-9.0.0 gtk+-3.18.2 libarchive-3.1.2
mesa-11.0.9
+ pkg-config-0.29 sdl2-2.0.4 zlib-1.2.8
location: gnu/packages/games.scm:1766:2
homepage: http://0ldsk00l.ca/nestopia/
license: GPL 2+
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.

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

[Christopher Allan Webber]

Mark H Weaver writes:

> Hi,
>
> I haven't yet looked closely at MAME, but for now I wanted to address
> the question of WINE.
>
> Jean Louis <guix@rcdrun.com> 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 would also note that WINE is included in both Trisquel and Parabola.
>
> * * * * *
>
> 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?
>
>      Thanks,
>        Mark

I'm the one who gave the Wine example with a friend running old versions
of Blender.  You could say "oh well that's unusual", but I think this is
a really bad direction.

For one thing, free software based emulators are a great entry point
into people exploring the guts of how machines work.

Many of these ROMs may be nonfree.  But I really think it's a mistake to
prejudge and *prevent* interesting research work by refusing to include
something that is from its point all the way down free software.
Emulation tools are also a great motivation for research on exactly some
of the hardest problems free software is facing right now, such as free
hardware designs.  By condemning this space we may reduce our chance for
serious advancements.  Please don't do this!

Sometimes having these systems available does eventually lead to
interesting software being released as free software.  For example, the
SCUMMVM machine was originally used to play proprietary old point and
click adventure games.  But *because* it was released, we saw one game
enthusiastically released as free software, Beneath A Steel Sky, and
this might never have happened otherwise.

Similarly, the z-machine has some free software games.  I am told that
this one is GPLv2+: http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=52x2zxt8ers4rxc0

Some more: http://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchfor=tag:GPL

A friend of mine is a free software developer who is greatly interested
in building text adventure systems on the z-machine with free software
stacks from top to bottom.  Would it make sense to demonize this work,
and prevent that from ever happening, because at present there are so
few options presently?

I think this is a really bad path to go down.  I hope we don't go down
it.  Let's condemn proprietary software, but not make assumptions that
free software systems will only be used for proprietary purposes.  We
might make that into a self-fulfilling prophecy, and prevent some future
interesting free work.  I think that would be a shame.

 - Chris

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

[Thompson, David]

On Tue, Mar 29, 2016 at 1:30 PM, Christopher Allan Webber
<cwebber@dustycloud.org> wrote:
> Mark H Weaver writes:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I haven't yet looked closely at MAME, but for now I wanted to address
>> the question of WINE.
>>
>> Jean Louis <guix@rcdrun.com> 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 would also note that WINE is included in both Trisquel and Parabola.
>>
>> * * * * *
>>
>> 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?
>>
>>      Thanks,
>>        Mark
>
> I'm the one who gave the Wine example with a friend running old versions
> of Blender.  You could say "oh well that's unusual", but I think this is
> a really bad direction.
>
> For one thing, free software based emulators are a great entry point
> into people exploring the guts of how machines work.
>
> Many of these ROMs may be nonfree.  But I really think it's a mistake to
> prejudge and *prevent* interesting research work by refusing to include
> something that is from its point all the way down free software.
> Emulation tools are also a great motivation for research on exactly some
> of the hardest problems free software is facing right now, such as free
> hardware designs.  By condemning this space we may reduce our chance for
> serious advancements.  Please don't do this!
>
> Sometimes having these systems available does eventually lead to
> interesting software being released as free software.  For example, the
> SCUMMVM machine was originally used to play proprietary old point and
> click adventure games.  But *because* it was released, we saw one game
> enthusiastically released as free software, Beneath A Steel Sky, and
> this might never have happened otherwise.
>
> Similarly, the z-machine has some free software games.  I am told that
> this one is GPLv2+: http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=52x2zxt8ers4rxc0
>
> Some more: http://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchfor=tag:GPL
>
> A friend of mine is a free software developer who is greatly interested
> in building text adventure systems on the z-machine with free software
> stacks from top to bottom.  Would it make sense to demonize this work,
> and prevent that from ever happening, because at present there are so
> few options presently?
>
> I think this is a really bad path to go down.  I hope we don't go down
> it.  Let's condemn proprietary software, but not make assumptions that
> free software systems will only be used for proprietary purposes.  We
> might make that into a self-fulfilling prophecy, and prevent some future
> interesting free work.  I think that would be a shame.

An emphatic +1 to this!  Very well put.  Thank you, Chris.

- Dave

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

[Eric Bavier]

On 2016-03-29 12:32, Thompson, David wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 29, 2016 at 1:30 PM, Christopher Allan Webber
> <cwebber@dustycloud.org> wrote:
>> Mark H Weaver writes:
>> 
>>> Hi,
>>> 
>>> I haven't yet looked closely at MAME, but for now I wanted to address
>>> the question of WINE.
>>> 
>>> Jean Louis <guix@rcdrun.com> 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 would also note that WINE is included in both Trisquel and 
>>> Parabola.
>>> 
>>> * * * * *
>>> 
>>> 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?
>>> 
>>>      Thanks,
>>>        Mark
>> 
>> I'm the one who gave the Wine example with a friend running old 
>> versions
>> of Blender.  You could say "oh well that's unusual", but I think this 
>> is
>> a really bad direction.
>> 
>> For one thing, free software based emulators are a great entry point
>> into people exploring the guts of how machines work.
>> 
>> Many of these ROMs may be nonfree.  But I really think it's a mistake 
>> to
>> prejudge and *prevent* interesting research work by refusing to 
>> include
>> something that is from its point all the way down free software.
>> Emulation tools are also a great motivation for research on exactly 
>> some
>> of the hardest problems free software is facing right now, such as 
>> free
>> hardware designs.  By condemning this space we may reduce our chance 
>> for
>> serious advancements.  Please don't do this!
>> 
>> Sometimes having these systems available does eventually lead to
>> interesting software being released as free software.  For example, 
>> the
>> SCUMMVM machine was originally used to play proprietary old point and
>> click adventure games.  But *because* it was released, we saw one game
>> enthusiastically released as free software, Beneath A Steel Sky, and
>> this might never have happened otherwise.
>> 
>> Similarly, the z-machine has some free software games.  I am told that
>> this one is GPLv2+: http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=52x2zxt8ers4rxc0
>> 
>> Some more: http://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchfor=tag:GPL
>> 
>> A friend of mine is a free software developer who is greatly 
>> interested
>> in building text adventure systems on the z-machine with free software
>> stacks from top to bottom.  Would it make sense to demonize this work,
>> and prevent that from ever happening, because at present there are so
>> few options presently?
>> 
>> I think this is a really bad path to go down.  I hope we don't go down
>> it.  Let's condemn proprietary software, but not make assumptions that
>> free software systems will only be used for proprietary purposes.  We
>> might make that into a self-fulfilling prophecy, and prevent some 
>> future
>> interesting free work.  I think that would be a shame.
> 
> An emphatic +1 to this!  Very well put.  Thank you, Chris.
> 
> - Dave

Seconded.

-- 
`~Eric

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

[Jean Louis]

Hello Ludo,

Please understand, I have nothing personal against you and your work, I
appreciate it much, to make functional operating system and future is
bright, as people will tend to use Guix and GuixSD for the features it
offers.

There shall be somebody checking the issues before the package is
included. That is my opinion, of course you do as you wish.

Process should be like this:

- does the package use free software license as specified by FSF?
- if yes, does it use any trademarks?
- if yes, does the trademark owner explicitly says in the package that
  trademark may be used in compatible manner with the license?
- if it cannot be used in compatible manner with the license, trademark
  shall be removed or otherwise handled.

Above is for trademarks that belong to software owners. But there is one
more important question when deciding on package inclusions:

- does the package includes well known third party trademarks, that
  don't belong to the sofware author? This is more dangerous than the
  trademarks that belong to software owner, although respect shall be
  given to both in equal manner IMHO.

With the trademark one can take down all the distribution from the
website, at least temporarily. One is open to attacks.

Did you see how NPM reacted, they reacted wrongly to simple accusation,
but in their case, there was no trademark infringement, it was just
warning. And they over-reacted. In my opinion, there was no trademark
infringement with the KIK Interactive. It was lack of knowledge on NPM
side. 

Read here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark_infringement

Trademark has different classes. For example, cooking would be different
from tyre sales. I could call my cooking recipes or business MIRKADO® if
I wish, while tyre sales could call them MIRKADO® if they wish. That is
not infringing, unless the trademark is well known by special
convention. For example, one cannot open a business for car sales and
name it Coca-Cola, it would not work, as trademark is well known (with
exceptions of some countries if they don't follow the convention).

Definition of infringement:

Trademark infringement is a violation of the exclusive rights attached
to a trademark without the authorization of the trademark owner or any
licensees (provided that such authorization was within the scope of the
licence). Infringement may occur when one party, the "infringer", uses a
trademark which is identical or confusingly similar to a trademark owned
by another party, in relation to products or services which are
identical or similar to the products or services which the registration
covers.

And the Nintendo emulator in GuixSD is clearly:

- using Nintendo trademark, making it non-free, as users cannot just
legally copy GuixSD and give to others. Whole distribution is infected
with it, as the package definition uses the trademark and in the source
there appears "Nintendo" too.

- the trademark is used in the relation to products or services which
are identical or similar to the products or services which the
registration covers. That applies.

These both cases applies to packages of Nintendo, and to the intended
package of MAME.

That is for your consideration. I am sharing my knowledge and experience
with you.

Jean Louis

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

[IngeGNUe]

>I can assume you have verified it for compliance. Please also reconsider
>if than free software distribution shall include malware GPL licensed
>software, because we cannot know neither assume that people are going to
>use it for malware purposes, even though it is malware.


The FSDG already rules out malware.

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

[Mark H Weaver]

IngeGNUe <ingegnue@riseup.net> writes:

>>I can assume you have verified it for compliance. Please also reconsider
>>if than free software distribution shall include malware GPL licensed
>>software, because we cannot know neither assume that people are going to
>>use it for malware purposes, even though it is malware.
>
>
> The FSDG already rules out malware.

When quoting text from another email, please include the name and email
address of the person you're quoting.

     Thanks,
       Mark

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

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi!

Thanks Chris for the thoughtful comments and insightful examples!

Christopher Allan Webber <cwebber@dustycloud.org> skribis:

> I think this is a really bad path to go down.  I hope we don't go down
> it.  Let's condemn proprietary software, but not make assumptions that
> free software systems will only be used for proprietary purposes.  We
> might make that into a self-fulfilling prophecy, and prevent some future
> interesting free work.  I think that would be a shame.

Based on what you said, I agree with you.

So I think the course of action would now be to:

  1. Include MAME, possibly under a different name as on Parabola if
     there’s a trademark issue, and removing the non-free files that I
     think someone mentioned somewhere (?).

  2. Keep the Nintendo® emulators, following whatever the best practice
     is in other FSDG distros with regards to mention of the brand in
     the description and synopsis.

Thank you people!  :-)

Ludo’.

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

[IngeGNUe]

On 03/30/16 12:11, Mark H Weaver wrote:
> IngeGNUe <ingegnue@riseup.net> writes:
> 
>>> I can assume you have verified it for compliance. Please also reconsider
>>> if than free software distribution shall include malware GPL licensed
>>> software, because we cannot know neither assume that people are going to
>>> use it for malware purposes, even though it is malware.
>>
>>
>> The FSDG already rules out malware.
> 
> When quoting text from another email, please include the name and email
> address of the person you're quoting.
> 
>      Thanks,
>        Mark
> 

Whoops, that was from Jean.

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

[Isaac David]

Hi,

Parabola does ship fully free emulators for which no free games
exist. At this moment the user has to opt-in for installing
your-freedom_emu to block those packages, so it actually falls
down somewhere between your "liberal" and "extremely liberal"
categories.

My view was that while useless in a 100% free environment just
having them installed and inspecting their user interfaces wouldn't
violate your freedom in any way. A free emulator with free
dependencies wouldn't be unethical unless it recommended using
proprietary software with it. However in the last few days I have
seen many arguments showing there are yet more valid uses I hadn't
imagined, like learning from the source code and testing portability
without leaving your comfy libre OS.

In a distro without unprivileged package management like Parabola
an opt-in blacklist could satisfy Jean Louis' parenting concerns, but
only until the point the unprivileged users determined to run non-free
software learn to look for applications outside the package manager.

(I lied. Parabola has unprivileged package management thanks to
Guix)[1]

Meanwhile other emulators and wine are completely out of the
question because there's free applications for them, even though
using the non-free ones is more common. Parabola documents emulators
extensively in a wiki page.[2] The wiki also considers aspects such
as the possibility of writing free software for free emulator
platforms which currently have no free games/applications as far as
it's known (i,e. whether free toolchains targeting those platforms
exist). I also had a good laugh learning about free emulators that
will only run on wine.


[1]: https://www.parabola.nu/packages/?q=guix
[2]: https://wiki.parabola.nu/Emulator_licensing_issues

Le mar. 29 mars 2016 à 10:31, alírio eyng <alirioeyng@gmail.com> a 
écrit :
> these are the approaches i can think:
> *extremely conservative (eliminating false positive errors)[1]
>  removing all emulators
> *conservative (eliminating false positive errors)[1]
>  make packages/executables like game1-emulator1, game1-emulator2, ...
> and not allowing direct emulator installation/execution
> *liberal (avoiding false positive errors[1] and false negative 
> errors[2])
>  allowing all emulators with free games know
> *extremely liberal (eliminating false negative errors)[2]
>  allowing all emulators
> 
> extremely liberal is naive because it just looks down in the
> dependency dag, there's no reason to not look up
> extremely conservative is naive because it doesn't allow completely 
> free uses
> conservative would solve the issues that originate this thread
> liberal is more convenient in some cases
> 
> i consider conservative better, liberal ok, and any of the extremes 
> unreasonable
> 
> fsdg doesn't allow extremely liberal (according to other people
> interpretation), in ndiswrapper, for example:
> "with one exception, all ndis drivers are nonfree--and the one free
> one is a windows port of a native linux driver. so right now, this
> isn't useful for anything besides using nonfree software"[3]
> 
> parabola follows extremely conservative with your-freedom_emu[4]
> 
> assuming we choose conservative; for wine, we can make guile-wine,
> emacs-wine[5] and gnutls-wine[6], but remove wine
> 
> it seems there's at least one free game needing an emulator[7]
> 
> i think this is a discussion about fsdg[8] and we should discuss it at
> gnu-linux-libre@nongnu.org
> 
> [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/false_positives_and_false_negatives#False_positive_error
> [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/false_positives_and_false_negatives#False_negative_error
> [3]https://libreplanet.org/wiki/List_of_software_that_does_not_respect_the_Free_System_Distribution_Guidelines
> [4]https://www.parabola.nu/packages/libre/any/your-freedom_emu/
> [5]https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2016-03/msg01216.html
> [6]https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2014-11/msg00333.html
> [7]http://pineight.com/lu/
> [8]http://www.gnu.org/distros/free-system-distribution-guidelines.html
> 

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

[alírio eyng]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 3700 bytes --]

Isaac David:
>Parabola does ship fully free emulators for which no free games
>exist. At this moment the user has to opt-in for installing
>your-freedom_emu to block those packages, so it actually falls
>down somewhere between your "liberal" and "extremely liberal"
>categories.
"parabola follows extremely liberal without your-freedom_emu"
i thought it was common knowledge/implicit, my mistake

>My view was that while useless in a 100% free environment just
>having them installed and inspecting their user interfaces wouldn't
>violate your freedom in any way. A free emulator with free
>dependencies wouldn't be unethical unless it recommended using
>proprietary software with it.
agreed, but we shouldn't package useless things

> However in the last few days I have
>seen many arguments showing there are yet more valid uses I hadn't
>imagined, like learning from the source code and testing portability
>without leaving your comfy libre OS.
source code is out of question for a distro, unless you want to
compile and execute it (or just have a package that copy the source
code); but developing without a game is like developing without a test
suite...
"testing portability without leaving your comfy libre os" would only
be impeded by extremely conservative, that i reject

>In a distro without unprivileged package management like Parabola
>an opt-in blacklist could satisfy Jean Louis' parenting concerns, but
>only until the point the unprivileged users determined to run non-free
>software learn to look for applications outside the package manager.
applying a policy to unwilling people is a security issue, out of question
i'm interested in lessening the effort to remain in freedom (for
people willing it)
but your-freedom_emu is extremely conservative, it deny free uses; that i reject

>Meanwhile other emulators and wine are completely out of the
>question because there's free applications for them
i translate it as "extremely conservative/conservative is completely
out of the question"

you missed the main argument
"extremely liberal is naive because it just looks down in the
dependency dag, there's no reason to not look up"
i think i should try to explain better, included is a image
(emulator-dependency-dag.svg)
to _execute_ an emulator _usefully_, and to test during development,
we need all dependencies and a game
every one agree that if one dependency is nonfree, we can't _execute_
an emulator _usefully_ in freedom
several people miss: if all games are nonfree, we also can't _execute_
an emulator _usefully_ in freedom

maybe an analogy:
*extremely conservative is like nonfree software
*conservative is like agpl
*liberal is like gpl
*extremely liberal is like public domain
nonfree software is unreasonable (unethical) because it denies freedom
public domain is unreasonable (not unethical) because it doesn't protect freedom
gpl restrict freedom _directly_; gpl2 can't be linked with gpl3, even
both being free software; but it gives more freedom _indirectly_; and
in most cases we can make an exception, just releasing the gpl2 as
gpl2+
agpl gives yet more freedom, although it is more inconvenient in some cases

so agpl is better, gpl ok and public domain unreasonable (not
unethical), if your aim is freedom
_not denying_ freedom and _actively protecting_ it are different
even if _actively protecting_ freedom is inconvenient and we need to
make some exceptions, i believe it is better

expecting the user to evaluate if some game is free is making it
unnecessarily difficult to remain in freedom
making game packages/executables and not emulator packages/executables
would allow all know good uses and still signal the user to be
cautious with other games

[-- Attachment #2: emulator-dependency-dag.svg --]
[-- Type: image/svg+xml, Size: 6891 bytes --]

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

[Ricardo Wurmus]

alírio eyng <alirioeyng@gmail.com> writes:

> Isaac David:
>> However in the last few days I have
>>seen many arguments showing there are yet more valid uses I hadn't
>>imagined, like learning from the source code and testing portability
>>without leaving your comfy libre OS.
> source code is out of question for a distro, unless you want to
> compile and execute it (or just have a package that copy the source
> code); but developing without a game is like developing without a test
> suite...

I don’t understand this.  I regularly look at the sources of programmes
I find interesting.  Guix makes this very easy with

    guix build -S name

You don’t have to compile and execute it to find source code useful.

I also disagree with the second part of the last sentence.  You don’t
have to hack on the emulator, but you can hack on an existing free game
or write your own.

> expecting the user to evaluate if some game is free is making it
> unnecessarily difficult to remain in freedom
> making game packages/executables and not emulator packages/executables
> would allow all know good uses and still signal the user to be
> cautious with other games

This limits the use of the emulator.  You seem to think that an emulator
is only useful as a runtime dependency for a game, but I and others in
this thread disagree.

~~ Ricardo

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

[alírio eyng]

On 4/1/16, Ricardo Wurmus <rekado@elephly.net> wrote:
> alírio eyng <alirioeyng@gmail.com> writes:
>> Isaac David:
>>> However in the last few days I have
>>>seen many arguments showing there are yet more valid uses I hadn't
>>>imagined, like learning from the source code and testing portability
>>>without leaving your comfy libre OS.
>> source code is out of question for a distro, unless you want to
>> compile and execute it (or just have a package that copy the source
>> code); but developing without a game is like developing without a test
>> suite...
> I don’t understand this.  I regularly look at the sources of programmes
> I find interesting.
how do you find it interesting without executing it?

> You don’t have to compile and execute it to find source code useful.
agreed; but as i argued, if you never will execute, just have a
package that copy the source code or not include in the distro

> You don’t
> have to hack on the emulator, but you can hack on an existing free game
> or write your own.
agreed
a free game would be allowed by conservative approach as i described
a free game would only be disallowed by extremely conservative
approach as i described, that i reject

>> expecting the user to evaluate if some game is free is making it
>> unnecessarily difficult to remain in freedom
>> making game packages/executables and not emulator packages/executables
>> would allow all know good uses and still signal the user to be
>> cautious with other games
>
> This limits the use of the emulator.  You seem to think that an emulator
> is only useful as a runtime dependency for a game, but I and others in
> this thread disagree.
i want to allow all good uses, they all can have exceptions
i believe the best way to _actively protect_ freedom is with a policy
with some compromise, this don't mean the exceptions justify changing
the rule
you seem to think i'm defending extremely conservative, that i reject
most people in this thread seem only choosing between extremely
conservative or extremely liberal, i reject extremely conservative; so
i also would prefer extremely liberal, if that was a binary choice;
i'm arguing it isn't

i believe the _main_ use of a emulator is as a runtime dependency for
a game, and we should apply the same reasoning behind ndiswrapper
"with one exception, all ndis drivers are nonfree--and the one free
one is a windows port of a native linux driver. so right now, this
isn't useful for anything besides using nonfree software"[1]
obviously i can say i want to look at ndiswrapper source code, and
this should be allowed
but this don't justify including ndiswrapper executable in a free distro

[1]https://libreplanet.org/wiki/List_of_software_that_does_not_respect_the_Free_System_Distribution_Guidelines

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

[alírio eyng]

Ivan Zaigralin:
> Yes, it emulates non-free software.
wait, this is missing the point
there are several categories of software that are itself free and can
be used to run (directly or indirectly) nonfree software:

nonfree down in dag: dosemu
_only_ nonfree up in dag: ndiswrapper
nonfree oriented community: wine
free oriented community: gcc

nonfree down is nonfree, you can't build it in freedom
nonfree up is nonfree, you can't execute it _usefully_ in freedom
nonfree community, example:
if i go to appdb in wine site, from the "top-10 platinum", nine have
"license: retail", one have "license: free to use"; they not just
promote nonfree software but also spread misleading information; this
should be "price: nongratis" and "price: gratis"

my approach was to remove nonfree down and nonfree up and hide the
package/executable of nonfree community

joshua proposed forking nonfree community[1]; this is still better,
and still more effort

> No, it's no longer relevant. I mean,
> it's no longer relevant as software, but only as the historical record
> of what entertainment software was like in the times of yore. New
> nonfree games are being written today in order to seduce people, so I
> can see why something like wine is dangerous, but no one, no one will
> get seduced by a museum piece.
wine-supported nonfree programs are increasing, mame-supported nonfree
programs don't.
so wine should get priority, if they are in the same category

> MAME does not give any incentive to use
> non-free software, because all of this old software is obsolete and
> useless. But it does give an ability to study it from the historical
> perspective, which is a good thing.
not sure what it means
maybe "mame source code should be allowed to be studied"?
 sure, but this don't justify including executables
maybe "using nonfree software with historical interest is ok"?
 i don't believe the motive to use it (fun, nostalgia, historical
interest) justify nonfree software

from [2], for _most_ hardware it emulates, mame is nonfree up, you
can't execute it _usefully_ in freedom (note _usefully_ means
something more than playing with menus or commandline switches)
so i think mame should be broke down, as there are parts in different categories

[1]http://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/gnu-linux-libre/2016-04/msg00005.html
[2]http://docs.mamedev.org/basicuse/gettingstarted.html#system-requirements,
section "BIOS Dumps and Software"

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

[Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli]

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On Tue, 29 Mar 2016 16:31:40 +0000
alírio eyng <alirioeyng@gmail.com> wrote:

> these are the approaches i can think:
> *extremely conservative (eliminating false positive errors)[1]
>  removing all emulators
> *conservative (eliminating false positive errors)[1]
>  make packages/executables like game1-emulator1, game1-emulator2, ...
> and not allowing direct emulator installation/execution
> *liberal (avoiding false positive errors[1] and false negative
> errors[2]) allowing all emulators with free games know
> *extremely liberal (eliminating false negative errors)[2]
>  allowing all emulators
Why not just requiring some documentation along the emulator that
documents at least one fully free software that can run on it.

That software would have to be able to be built and run 100% free
software.

Making that documentation available and known to the user will steer
that user toward free software.

Denis.

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

[Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli]

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On Wed, 30 Mar 2016 16:30:17 -0600
Isaac David <isacdaavid@isacdaavid.info> wrote:

> Hi,
Hi,

> My view was that while useless in a 100% free environment just
> having them installed and inspecting their user interfaces wouldn't
> violate your freedom in any way. A free emulator with free
> dependencies wouldn't be unethical unless it recommended using
> proprietary software with it. However in the last few days I have
> seen many arguments showing there are yet more valid uses I hadn't
> imagined, like learning from the source code and testing portability
> without leaving your comfy libre OS.
Just requiring documentation that shows how at least one valid use case
(that works) while remaining 100% free would be great:
It would fix the issue for good, while improving users freedom by
limiting the steer towards non-free software that such virtual machines
create.

For instance:
- For qemu, libvirt and so on, we would ship or point to documentation
  explaining how to run a 100% free software distribution like Trisquel.
- For wine we would document compiling and running of a 100% free
  software.
- For emulators, unless 100% free distributions do exist for the
  machines they emulate, we'd document how to compile and run an
  application or game.
- For emulators that have no 100% free games but that have a toolchain,
  we could document how to do compile and run a hello world. That would
  count as 100% free software compiling and running.

> Meanwhile other emulators and wine are completely out of the
> question because there's free applications for them, even though
> using the non-free ones is more common.
I don't doubt that, however is it possible to compile and run such
applications 100% free? Since some GNU software is ported on wine, I
would guess that there is a way to do it, but I've no proof.
I fear that some free software applications would include some non-free
runtime libraries. Given how poorly I know non-free OS, I've no idea if
it's a legitimate concern.

> Parabola documents emulators extensively in a wiki page.
Should we document how to compile and run free software there, or
should we ship that documentation with the package?
In the former case, should we point the user to the wiki page at the
end of the package installation, in the case of Parabola.

Denis.

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

[alírio eyng]

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/

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

[alírio eyng]

Tobias Platen:
> Emulators can be useful for reverse engineering
reverse engineering is the action of understanding undocumented
interfaces (mostly hardware).
emulators are the _result_ of reverse engineering, not tools to do it.
this result is useless if there's no other interface implementations
to develop things to or free software requiring it to run.

> In the case of MAME at least some files will be usable to build new works.
sure, but if they are to be used as source, this don't justify
inclusion of executables in a free distro.

> Some of those old FM-based sound synthesizer chips are emulated with MAME
sounds like obsolete api, is there any reason to use it instead of
using sound synthesizer software?

> Ndiswrapper is a different case, because it implements a proprietary interface of the Windows Kernel.
"proprietary interface" is misleading.
there are _undocumented_ interfaces and maybe _legally unusable_ interfaces [1].
ndiswrapper implements an undocumented interface originally meant as
software (api).
mame implements undocumented interfaces originally meant as hardware.
the only difference is the original intentions, and i think they are
not relevant.

> sometimes I use Wine, but only when I need to reverse engineer a proprietary format.
i think you meant you use nonfree software on top of wine with the
intention of reverse engineering it.
this is a compromise acceptable to use nonfree software, if "the use
of the nonfree software aims directly at putting an end to the use of
that very same nonfree software" [2].
but this isn't related to wine (or other emulators) at all and apply
to _all_ nonfree software.
free distros choose the compromise of making this a little harder by
not supporting nonfree software so people are not mislead in using it.
but it is still reasonably easy to opt-out of the free distro
whitelist and use nonfree software if wanted.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_America,_Inc._v._Google,_Inc.
[2]https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/is-ever-good-use-nonfree-program.en.html

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

[Felipe Sanches]

On Sun, Apr 3, 2016 at 3:36 PM, alírio eyng <alirioeyng@gmail.com> wrote:
> Tobias Platen:
>> Emulators can be useful for reverse engineering
> reverse engineering is the action of understanding undocumented
> interfaces (mostly hardware).
> emulators are the _result_ of reverse engineering, not tools to do it.
> this result is useless if there's no other interface implementations
> to develop things to or free software requiring it to run.

I completely disagree!
I have been actively using MAME to perform reverse engineering of
non-free firmware for a bit more than a couple years.
Since I do it myself, I know my sentence is true :-)

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

[alírio eyng]

Felipe Sanches:
>On Sun, Apr 3, 2016 at 3:36 PM, alírio eyng <address@hidden> wrote:
>> Tobias Platen:
>>> Emulators can be useful for reverse engineering
...
>> emulators are the _result_ of reverse engineering, not tools to do it.
...
>I completely disagree!
>I have been actively using MAME to perform reverse engineering of
>non-free firmware for a bit more than a couple years.
this is missing the point.
you are using mame to _run_ non-free firmware and performing reverse
engineering on a running non-free firmware.
but if we support running non-free software (or firmware) on an
emulator there's no point in not supporting non-free software outside
it. e.g. skype
because i can say its useful to run skype to reverse engineer it, and
this is true.

free distros choose the compromise of making this a little harder by
not supporting nonfree software so people are not mislead in using it.
but it is still reasonably easy to opt-out of the free distro
whitelist and use nonfree software if wanted.

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

[Felipe Sanches]

I will attempt to stop posting to this thread because I think I
already presented all of my points here.

To summarize my conclusions:
I think MAME is likely not compatible with the free sw distro
guidelines. And I think shipping a prebuilt binary package of MAME is
not really useful for **most** of the things that MAME is useful other
than playing non-free games. Whether it should or shouldn't be
acceptable on such distros policies is still an ongoing debate,
though.

I still think that MAME is a very useful asset for education on
electronics, hardware design, reverse engineering techniques, and
similar topics as well as for the historical preservation of our
technological legacy (even if it's a legacy of mostly non-free
programs, we still must not "burn books", right?). But the way to
**truly appreciate** all of that is probably by really fetching MAME
from git and inspecting its source code. So, the whole packaging
debate is of not much value in that context (in my opinion), even
though it is nice as a sort of brainstorming or some sort of
intellectual exploration of ideas.

Having said it all, I will try not to talk here any more, unless I
have something really new to say.
Happy Hacking
Felipe Sanches

On Sun, Apr 3, 2016 at 6:02 PM, alírio eyng <alirioeyng@gmail.com> wrote:
> Felipe Sanches:
>>On Sun, Apr 3, 2016 at 3:36 PM, alírio eyng <address@hidden> wrote:
>>> Tobias Platen:
>>>> Emulators can be useful for reverse engineering
> ...
>>> emulators are the _result_ of reverse engineering, not tools to do it.
> ...
>>I completely disagree!
>>I have been actively using MAME to perform reverse engineering of
>>non-free firmware for a bit more than a couple years.
> this is missing the point.
> you are using mame to _run_ non-free firmware and performing reverse
> engineering on a running non-free firmware.
> but if we support running non-free software (or firmware) on an
> emulator there's no point in not supporting non-free software outside
> it. e.g. skype
> because i can say its useful to run skype to reverse engineer it, and
> this is true.
>
> free distros choose the compromise of making this a little harder by
> not supporting nonfree software so people are not mislead in using it.
> but it is still reasonably easy to opt-out of the free distro
> whitelist and use nonfree software if wanted.
>

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

[alírio eyng]

Felipe Sanches:
>I think MAME is likely not compatible with the free sw distro
>guidelines.
ignoring the trademark; as a whole, mame is in the same category as
wine, which is allowed.
but most parts of it are in the same category as ndiswrapper; i don't
think this parts should be allowed just because they are bundled
together.

>I think shipping a prebuilt binary package of MAME is
>not really useful for **most** of the things that MAME is useful other
>than playing non-free games.
...
>I still think that MAME is a very useful asset for education on
>electronics, hardware design, reverse engineering techniques, and
>similar topics as well as for the historical preservation of our
>technological legacy (even if it's a legacy of mostly non-free
>programs, we still must not "burn books", right?).
i think the argument here is "obsolete interfaces are useful by themselves".
this imply reversing the decision on ndiswrapper.
this is a valid approach (eliminating false negative errors)[1] but
probably not the best way to protect freedom.

>I will try not to talk here any more, unless I
>have something really new to say.
i will probably continue replying while people are quoting me and
making proposals or confusing general-purpose runtime dependencies
with tools for reverse engineering without understanding the
consequences.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/false_positives_and_false_negatives#False_negative_error

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

[Felipe Sanches]

On Mon, Apr 4, 2016 at 12:26 AM, alírio eyng <alirioeyng@gmail.com> wrote:
> Felipe Sanches:
>>I will try not to talk here any more, unless I
>>have something really new to say.
> i will probably continue replying while people are quoting me and
> making proposals or confusing general-purpose runtime dependencies
> with tools for reverse engineering without understanding the
> consequences.

MAME provides an interactive debugger that enables reverse engineering
of the loaded ROMs.

http://letshackarcadegames.com/?p=338

http://letshackarcadegames.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/dkong_watchpoint_barrel.png

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

[alírio eyng]

Felipe Sanches:
>MAME provides an interactive debugger
so mame is not just an emulator.
it is a emulator, disassembler and debugger.
this is relevant information i can't see in official documentation, thanks.

it seems even with a obsolete executable format, it can be a
interesting development environment.
a interesting development environment is useful in itself and don't
need free games.
is there a similar environment to a current architecture?
can this development environment be used in freedom to develop a game
from scratch?
this development environment works for all architectures mame supports?

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

[Felipe Sanches]

The other situation when I was able to benefit from the automatically
generated custom debugger UI was when working on emulating the
(non-free) game Another World from the 90's. It was originally
executed on Amiga computers, so the debugger would let me see the
opcodes of the Amiga CPU. But the game was actually originally
implemented in a custom virtual machine created by its author, Eric
Chahi. I decided to emulate this virtual machine in MAME as if it were
a real CPU. The end-result was that I got for the first time the
ability to inspect the game (non-free) bytecode at the virtual-machine
level by running it on the automatically generated debugger that MAME
provides.

This opens up a new level of insight on the internal workings of the
program that was never possible before with so much ease. A screenshot
of that can be seen here:
https://twitter.com/juca_gnu/status/686597622417719296

Happy Hacking,
Felipe Sanches

On Mon, Apr 4, 2016 at 7:47 PM, Felipe Sanches <juca@members.fsf.org> wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 4, 2016 at 7:23 PM, alírio eyng <alirioeyng@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Felipe Sanches:
>>>MAME provides an interactive debugger
>> so mame is not just an emulator.
>> it is a emulator, disassembler and debugger.
>> this is relevant information i can't see in official documentation, thanks.
>>
>> it seems even with a obsolete executable format, it can be a
>> interesting development environment.
>> a interesting development environment is useful in itself and don't
>> need free games.
>> is there a similar environment to a current architecture?
>> can this development environment be used in freedom to develop a game
>> from scratch?
>
> Yes. I did it.
> https://github.com/garoa/GunSmoke/tree/master/
>
>> this development environment works for all architectures mame supports?
> Yes. The debugger dialog is generic and you get it automatically as a
> bonus if you implement a new CPU emulation module. This happened with
> me a couple times already. I got access to the technical manuals of
> the first computer designed and manufactured in Brazil, which was
> called "Patinho Feio" (meaning something like "Ugly Duckling
> Computer"). I got the printed documentation from the hands of one of
> my university professors at the engineering school. He was involved in
> the team that developed the pioneer computer back in 1972.
>
> Based on the documentation (which I published it all on the Internet
> Archive with authorization form the original author:
> https://archive.org/details/Montador_do_Patinho_Feio__Julho1977) I
> wrote a new CPU emulation driver in MAME to emulate the custom
> instruction set of this Brazilian machine. Not only emulation works
> when loading its sample software - a trivially simple hello-world
> extracted from a punched data tape, trivial enough to not even be
> copyrightable I guess... - It also allows me to run the code step by
> step and to inspect the system memory because the whole debugging
> framework was "magically" inherited by the way MAME codebase is
> structured.
>
> So this makes it sure that absolutely every CPU architecture supported
> by MAME does also provide such nice interactive debugger. And the list
> of supported CPUs is absurdly broad:
>
> felipe@guarana:~/mame/src/devices/cpu$ ls
> 8x300      arm       drcbec.cpp    drccache.h  e0c6200   hd61700
> i860     m6800     mcs51        pdp8       sc61860  sm8500   tms32010
> ucom4    x86emit.h
> adsp2100   arm7      drcbec.h      drcfe.cpp   e132xs    hmcs40
> i960     m68000    mcs96        pic16c5x   scmp     spc700   tms32025
> uml.cpp  x86log.cpp
> alph8201   asap      drcbeut.cpp   drcfe.h     es5510    hphybrid
> ie15     m6805     melps4       pic16c62x  score    ssem     tms32031
> uml.h    x86log.h
> alto2      avr8      drcbeut.h     drcuml.cpp  esrip     i386
> jaguar   m6809     minx         powerpc    scudsp   ssp1601  tms32051
> unsp     z180
> am29000    ccpu      drcbex64.cpp  drcuml.h    f8        i4004
> lc8670   mb86233   mips         pps4       se3208   superfx  tms32082
> upd7725  z8
> amis2000   cop400    drcbex64.h    drcumlsh.h  g65816    i8008
> lh5801   mb86235   mn10200      psx        sh2      t11      tms34010
> upd7810  z80
> apexc      cosmac    drcbex86.cpp  dsp16       h6280     i8085
> lr35902  mb88xx    nec          rsp        sh4      tlcs90   tms57002
> v30mz    z8000
> arc        cp1610    drcbex86.h    dsp32       h8        i8089
> m37710   mc68hc11  patinhofeio  s2650      sharc    tlcs900  tms7000
> v60
> arcompact  cubeqcpu  drccache.cpp  dsp56k      hcd62121  i86
> m6502    mcs48     pdp1         saturn     sm510    tms1000  tms9900
> v810

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

[Felipe Sanches]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 5046 bytes --]

I am also sending the screenshot of the Another World virtual machine
debugger as an attachment to this message.

On Mon, Apr 4, 2016 at 7:58 PM, Felipe Sanches <juca@members.fsf.org> wrote:
> The other situation when I was able to benefit from the automatically
> generated custom debugger UI was when working on emulating the
> (non-free) game Another World from the 90's. It was originally
> executed on Amiga computers, so the debugger would let me see the
> opcodes of the Amiga CPU. But the game was actually originally
> implemented in a custom virtual machine created by its author, Eric
> Chahi. I decided to emulate this virtual machine in MAME as if it were
> a real CPU. The end-result was that I got for the first time the
> ability to inspect the game (non-free) bytecode at the virtual-machine
> level by running it on the automatically generated debugger that MAME
> provides.
>
> This opens up a new level of insight on the internal workings of the
> program that was never possible before with so much ease. A screenshot
> of that can be seen here:
> https://twitter.com/juca_gnu/status/686597622417719296
>
> Happy Hacking,
> Felipe Sanches
>
> On Mon, Apr 4, 2016 at 7:47 PM, Felipe Sanches <juca@members.fsf.org> wrote:
>> On Mon, Apr 4, 2016 at 7:23 PM, alírio eyng <alirioeyng@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Felipe Sanches:
>>>>MAME provides an interactive debugger
>>> so mame is not just an emulator.
>>> it is a emulator, disassembler and debugger.
>>> this is relevant information i can't see in official documentation, thanks.
>>>
>>> it seems even with a obsolete executable format, it can be a
>>> interesting development environment.
>>> a interesting development environment is useful in itself and don't
>>> need free games.
>>> is there a similar environment to a current architecture?
>>> can this development environment be used in freedom to develop a game
>>> from scratch?
>>
>> Yes. I did it.
>> https://github.com/garoa/GunSmoke/tree/master/
>>
>>> this development environment works for all architectures mame supports?
>> Yes. The debugger dialog is generic and you get it automatically as a
>> bonus if you implement a new CPU emulation module. This happened with
>> me a couple times already. I got access to the technical manuals of
>> the first computer designed and manufactured in Brazil, which was
>> called "Patinho Feio" (meaning something like "Ugly Duckling
>> Computer"). I got the printed documentation from the hands of one of
>> my university professors at the engineering school. He was involved in
>> the team that developed the pioneer computer back in 1972.
>>
>> Based on the documentation (which I published it all on the Internet
>> Archive with authorization form the original author:
>> https://archive.org/details/Montador_do_Patinho_Feio__Julho1977) I
>> wrote a new CPU emulation driver in MAME to emulate the custom
>> instruction set of this Brazilian machine. Not only emulation works
>> when loading its sample software - a trivially simple hello-world
>> extracted from a punched data tape, trivial enough to not even be
>> copyrightable I guess... - It also allows me to run the code step by
>> step and to inspect the system memory because the whole debugging
>> framework was "magically" inherited by the way MAME codebase is
>> structured.
>>
>> So this makes it sure that absolutely every CPU architecture supported
>> by MAME does also provide such nice interactive debugger. And the list
>> of supported CPUs is absurdly broad:
>>
>> felipe@guarana:~/mame/src/devices/cpu$ ls
>> 8x300      arm       drcbec.cpp    drccache.h  e0c6200   hd61700
>> i860     m6800     mcs51        pdp8       sc61860  sm8500   tms32010
>> ucom4    x86emit.h
>> adsp2100   arm7      drcbec.h      drcfe.cpp   e132xs    hmcs40
>> i960     m68000    mcs96        pic16c5x   scmp     spc700   tms32025
>> uml.cpp  x86log.cpp
>> alph8201   asap      drcbeut.cpp   drcfe.h     es5510    hphybrid
>> ie15     m6805     melps4       pic16c62x  score    ssem     tms32031
>> uml.h    x86log.h
>> alto2      avr8      drcbeut.h     drcuml.cpp  esrip     i386
>> jaguar   m6809     minx         powerpc    scudsp   ssp1601  tms32051
>> unsp     z180
>> am29000    ccpu      drcbex64.cpp  drcuml.h    f8        i4004
>> lc8670   mb86233   mips         pps4       se3208   superfx  tms32082
>> upd7725  z8
>> amis2000   cop400    drcbex64.h    drcumlsh.h  g65816    i8008
>> lh5801   mb86235   mn10200      psx        sh2      t11      tms34010
>> upd7810  z80
>> apexc      cosmac    drcbex86.cpp  dsp16       h6280     i8085
>> lr35902  mb88xx    nec          rsp        sh4      tlcs90   tms57002
>> v30mz    z8000
>> arc        cp1610    drcbex86.h    dsp32       h8        i8089
>> m37710   mc68hc11  patinhofeio  s2650      sharc    tlcs900  tms7000
>> v60
>> arcompact  cubeqcpu  drccache.cpp  dsp56k      hcd62121  i86
>> m6502    mcs48     pdp1         saturn     sm510    tms1000  tms9900
>> v810

[-- Attachment #2: 2016_JAN_11_AnotherWolrd_interactive_debugger.png --]
[-- Type: image/png, Size: 203556 bytes --]

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

[alírio eyng]

Felipe Sanches:
>On Mon, Apr 4, 2016 at 7:23 PM, alírio eyng <address@hidden> wrote:
>> this development environment works for all architectures mame supports?
>Yes. The debugger dialog is generic
...
>mame/src/devices/cpu$ ls
...
>i386
the debugger works on all architectures
i can use i386
i can use z80 and read your code as example
it still seem useless supporting obselete architectures with only
nonfree software depending on it

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

[Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2885 bytes --]

On Sat, 2 Apr 2016 08:48:58 +0000
alírio eyng <alirioeyng@gmail.com> wrote:

> On 4/2/16, Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli <GNUtoo@no-log.org> wrote:
> > Why not just requiring some documentation along the emulator that
> > documents at least one fully free software that can run on it.  
> this is missing some complexity:
> we don't want something better done natively (we exclude
> ndiswrapper)[1] but we still want to allow introducing free software
> on nonfree platforms[2]
My point was that documentation (and packaging as you point it) can
steer users towards free software.

The goal of the software may even be altered this way, if it cannot
be used fully free with its regular uses cases.

The former case might be faster to do, but getting it right would be
difficult since the user would have to be aware of that documentation.

Which one to do would then depend on the context.
For instance with qemu and libvirt, the software was modified not to
steer users towards running non-free GNU/Linux distributions.

While unrelated, the case of debootstrap is also interesting, since, on
parabola, it by default debootstraps free software distributions.
References and configuration related to non-100%-free distributions
were removed.

> i think packaging is better than documenting, shouldn't be much more
> effort
Right, I assumed documenting was way faster. I was probably wrong.

> but this doesn't address the problem of discernment
> example: i can go to [3] and see there are four games, i know they are
> free because they are inside a free distro frontier
> if users need to exit the free distro frontier, they probably will
> find nonfree and free games and don't see much difference
> the ideal would be to have a comprehensive set of games packaged
> inside the free distro frontier
The documentation would have had to take that into account.
I was thinking of something along the lines of HOWTO that you find in
the documentation of the distributions. Such as list of commands that
would explain how to do it, while making sure that freedom is preserved.

But as you pointed out, packaging might be faster and easier.

> hiding the emulator executable/package
I don't understand what it means.

> would warn when they are exiting the free distro frontier and poke
> them to add free games to the distro (suggesting to developers or
> sending patches)
That is very similar to documentation for me.
We might also want to do that on the parabola wiki, trying to implicate
people who might want to use such emulators.
Example: Why is <foo emulator> not in Parabola
         |-> <Explanation suggesting to send patches>

> alternatively, forking all emulators and creating a
> free community around them would also provide a freedom frontier
That is nice too. Uzebox seem in the right direction with that.

Denis.

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

[alírio eyng]

On 4/5/16, Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli <GNUtoo@no-log.org> wrote:
>documentation (and packaging as you point it) can
> steer users towards free software.
...
> Which one to do would then depend on the context.
> For instance with qemu and libvirt, the software was modified not to
> steer users towards running non-free GNU/Linux distributions.
qemu images seems big to package.
in guix we can make non-substitutable packages.

> While unrelated, the case of debootstrap is also interesting
not unrelated at all.
the guix way for qemu images would be packaging trisquel from
debootstrap, parabola from pacstrap, ...

>> hiding the emulator executable/package
> I don't understand what it means.
it is an opt-out whitelist implementation, i sketched it at [1].
in guix we can make a package not directly installable, but use it as
a dependency for other packages; so it would go to the store but not
to the profile and remain out of $PATH.
in parabola we can make the executable install to
/usr/exitingfreedistrofrontier and remain out of $PATH, but it would
need to copy the executable to every game package or make a pacman
wrapper to make it not directly installable.

>> would warn when they are exiting the free distro frontier and poke
>> them to add free games to the distro (suggesting to developers or
>> sending patches)
> That is very similar to documentation for me.
i think skipping the documentation and using a general-purpose search
engine like duckduckgo is quite common.
making the user install some other packaged free software and execute
a command like "PATH=$PATH:/usr/exitingfreedistrofrontier/wine/" could
warn much better.

>> alternatively, forking all emulators and creating a
>> free community around them would also provide a freedom frontier
> That is nice too. Uzebox seem in the right direction with that.
not sure[2]

looking up in dag, there's three kinds of packages:
useless in freedom: ndiswrapper.
mostly useless in freedom: wine.
useful in freedom: qemu.

useless packages should be removed.
making a opt-out whitelist for mostly useless packages seems the better option.
useful packages should get a opt-in whitelist.

mame should be classified for each architecture:
i386 and z80[3] are useful as development tools replacing current hardware.
obsolete architectures are useless if only nonfree software depend on
it, mostly useless otherwise.

[1]http://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/gnu-linux-libre/2016-03/msg00021.html
[2]http://uzebox.org/wiki/index.php?title=Category:Possible_copyright_violations
[3]z80's are still produced
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zilog_Z80

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

[Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli]

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On Mon, 4 Apr 2016 22:23:17 +0000
alírio eyng <alirioeyng@gmail.com> wrote:

> Felipe Sanches:
> >MAME provides an interactive debugger  
> so mame is not just an emulator.
> it is a emulator, disassembler and debugger.
> this is relevant information i can't see in official documentation,
> thanks.
> 
[...]
> a interesting development environment is useful in itself and don't
> need free games.
> is there a similar environment to a current architecture?
community/qtspim 9.1.17-2
    New user interface for spim, a MIPS simulator.

Denis.

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

[alírio eyng]

On 4/9/16, Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli <GNUtoo@no-log.org> wrote:
> alírio eyng <alirioeyng@gmail.com> wrote:
>> so mame is not just an emulator.
>> it is a emulator, disassembler and debugger.
...
>> is there a similar environment to a current architecture?
> community/qtspim 9.1.17-2
>     New user interface for spim, a MIPS simulator.
not really.
mame is a _machine code_ emulator, disassembler and debugger.
spim is an _assembly_ emulator and debugger.

assembly from disassembled _machine code_ can be used for reverse
engineering, detecting bugs on assemblers/compilers, ...
assembly _source code_ has meaningful labels, comments... like [0];
but you wont get it by reverse engineering itself, although you can
write it later.

spim isn't a tool for reverse engineering, although it can help after
using a disassembler.

but this question was already addressed by mame itself supporting
current architectures.
ignoring the trademark, for the purposes of this discussion:
a mame version with only support for current architectures (i386, z80,
...) would be like qemu.
a mame version with only support for obsolete architectures with some
free software depending on it would be like wine.
a mame version with only support for obsolete architectures without
free software depending on it would be like ndiswrapper.

[0]https://github.com/garoa/GunSmoke/blob/master/homebrew/maincpu.asm