From: "Thompson, David" <dthompson2@worcester.edu>
To: Christopher Allan Webber <cwebber@dustycloud.org>
Cc: guix-devel <guix-devel@gnu.org>
Subject: Re: MAME emulator is giving incentive to use non-free software
Date: Tue, 29 Mar 2016 13:32:03 -0400 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAJ=RwfZ-Ys-T41nk4DR1or7F1ScKrO6gfYc9fr00nN4kBtue9w@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <87h9fp2nvc.fsf@dustycloud.org>
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
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2016-03-29 17:32 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 54+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2016-03-28 21:55 MAME emulator is giving incentive to use non-free software Jean Louis
2016-03-29 0:26 ` Jookia
2016-03-29 4:42 ` Jean Louis
2016-03-29 6:27 ` Jookia
2016-03-29 7:30 ` Jean Louis
2016-03-29 8:25 ` Jookia
2016-03-29 11:35 ` rain1
2016-03-29 12:00 ` Jean Louis
2016-03-29 12:48 ` Nils Gillmann
2016-03-29 14:23 ` Mathieu Lirzin
2016-03-29 14:52 ` Jean Louis
2016-03-29 16:15 ` Ludovic Courtès
2016-03-29 17:29 ` Jean Louis
2016-03-29 17:47 ` Jean Louis
2016-03-29 12:41 ` Nils Gillmann
2016-03-29 1:44 ` Mark H Weaver
2016-03-29 13:03 ` Ludovic Courtès
2016-03-29 17:30 ` Christopher Allan Webber
2016-03-29 17:32 ` Thompson, David [this message]
2016-03-29 17:37 ` Eric Bavier
2016-03-30 20:25 ` Ludovic Courtès
2016-03-29 8:58 ` Taylan Ulrich Bayırlı/Kammer
2016-03-29 10:12 ` Jean Louis
2016-03-29 13:14 ` Ludovic Courtès
2016-03-29 13:51 ` Jean Louis
2016-03-29 16:09 ` Ludovic Courtès
-- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2016-03-29 14:01 Jean Louis
2016-03-29 14:46 ` Nils Gillmann
2016-03-29 16:31 alírio eyng
2016-03-30 22:30 ` Isaac David
2016-04-02 3:17 ` Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli
2016-03-31 22:50 ` alírio eyng
2016-04-01 6:23 ` Ricardo Wurmus
2016-04-01 12:15 ` alírio eyng
2016-04-01 20:03 ` alírio eyng
2016-04-02 2:19 ` Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli
2016-04-02 8:48 ` [GNU-linux-libre] " alírio eyng
2016-04-03 14:20 ` alírio eyng
2016-04-03 18:36 ` alírio eyng
2016-04-03 19:39 ` Felipe Sanches
2016-04-03 21:02 ` alírio eyng
2016-04-03 21:22 ` Felipe Sanches
2016-04-04 3:26 ` alírio eyng
2016-04-04 11:19 ` Felipe Sanches
2016-04-04 22:23 ` alírio eyng
2016-04-04 22:47 ` [GNU-linux-libre] " Felipe Sanches
2016-04-04 22:58 ` Felipe Sanches
2016-04-04 22:59 ` Felipe Sanches
2016-04-05 2:29 ` alírio eyng
2016-04-09 9:00 ` Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli
2016-04-09 19:43 ` alírio eyng
2016-04-05 15:59 ` Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli
2016-04-06 11:02 ` alírio eyng
2016-03-30 4:10 IngeGNUe
2016-03-30 16:11 ` Mark H Weaver
2016-03-30 21:26 ` IngeGNUe
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