[Lorento]

What do you think the feeling among contributors is? Are you happy to change yours?

Doesn't GPL effectively prohibit combining it with a closed source commercial product? That suggests you still won't be able to bundle all of MAME with a ROM.

[gillianseed]

>Doesn't GPL effectively prohibit combining it with a closed source commercial product?

Well yes, since if you sell it to someone you need to offer them the source code should they want it.

However the incentive here (as I understand it) was to allow MAME to be used in museums and the like where they charge an entry fee (thus commercial use), and not in order to make it easy for people to create closed source commercial forks of MAME.

[byuu]

I wasn't happy that GPLv3 wasn't an option, as I am against TiVoization; but I didn't want to throw a wrench in their efforts, so I accepted GPLv2.

(The older license was more permissive in my opinion; but a TiVo product was less likely if it couldn't be sold for profit.)

[SXX]

TiVoizaton is bad thing of course, but sadly GPLv3 for example won't let to put any app using this code to App Store.

Though weird why don't they at least consider GPLv2 or later as it's give a choice for anyone who may want to maintain GPLv3 forks.

[byuu]

> TiVoizaton is bad thing of course, but sadly GPLv3 for example won't let to put any app using this code to App Store.

That to me feels like more of a problem with the App Store than with the GPLv3.

But, I know that idealism tends to get in the way of pragmatism. I understand why they wanted GPLv2.

> Though weird why don't they at least consider GPLv2 or later as it's give a choice for anyone who may want to maintain GPLv3 forks.

I might say GPLv2-3, but I'd be worried about saying "or later", when I don't know what the GPLv4 will hold. Yet at the same time, if I did end up liking it, I'd hate to then be stuck on v2-v3 only. Very tough problem.

[belorn]

GPLv3 give you full permission to put apps in the app Store, so long you hack the App Store upload system so apple do not add their own code and license to the app. For example, you could bundle a GPLv3 app with a shim that allow users to install and run any program of their choice. The license would be perfectly fine with this, but apple would block it with the full force of their legal team.

[kstenerud]

I'm fine with the change. I've always allowed anyone special license to use my cores commercially if someone asked. Most of the M680x0 based home releases use it (SNK arcade classics, Metal Slug anthology, various Genesis/Megadrive emus, etc). Not sure who's using the G65816 and SPC700 chips (SNES), but there are probably some out there.