On Tue, Mar 29, 2016 at 1:30 PM, Christopher Allan Webber <cweb...@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 <g...@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
