The main purpose of MAME is to be a reference to the inner workings of
the emulated Arcade Machines. This is done for educational purposes and
to preserve many historical games from the oblivion they would sink
into when the hardware they run on will stop working.
Of course to preserve the games you must also be able to actually play
them; you can see that as a nice side effect.
It is not our intention to infringe any copyrights or patents pending on
the original games. All of the source code is either our own or freely
available. No portion of the code of the original ROMs is included in
the executable.
Some of the following rules might not apply to specific portions of MAME
(e.g. CPU emulators) which bear different copyright notices.
MAME is free. The source code is free. If you paid for it, you've been
ripped off. If you sell it, you are a thief!!!
The MAME executables must be distributed only in their original .zip
archives. You are not allowed to package them together with the original
ROMs. You are not allowed to distribute them on the same physical medium.
You ARE allowed to make them available for download on the same site, but
only if you warn users about the copyright status of the ROMs and the
legal issues involved.
You are NOT allowed to make MAME available for download together with one
giant big file containing all of the supported ROMs, or any files
containing more than one ROM set each. If you want to distribute such
files, you are not allowed to distribute MAME.
You are not allowed to distribute a modified version, nor to remove
and/or add files to the .zip archive. Adding one text file to advertise
your site is tolerated only if your site contributes original material
to the emulation scene.
If you distribute the executable, you should also distribute the source
code. If you can't do that, you must provide a pointer to a place where
the source can be obtained.
The source code cannot be used in a commercial product without a written
authorization of the authors. Use in non commercial products is allowed
and indeed encouraged; however if you use portions of the MAME source
code in your program, you must make the full source code freely available
as well.
Derivative works are allowed (provided source code is available), but
discouraged: MAME is a project continuously evolving, and you should, in
your best interest, submit your contributions to the development team, so
that they are integrated in the main distribution.
Usage of the _information_ contained in the source code is free for any
use. However, given the amount of time and energy it took to collect this
information, we would appreciate if you made the additional information
you might have freely available as well.
All trademarks cited in this document are property of their respective
owners.
