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

[Eric Bavier <ericbavier@openmailbox.org>]

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