Re: [GNU-linux-libre] MAME

[Felipe Sanches]

Let's say that I own a very old computer (such as the Commodore 64,
for instance) and that I want to implement a free BIOS for it, to
replace its original non-free boot-ROM code.

I can develop my new free BIOS code, compile it, generating as a
result a ROM image file, burn it into an UV-erasable EPROM chip, plug
it into the original PCB of the real machine and validate whether my
implementation works or not. It will almost certainly not work in the
first attempt. Then I can remove the chip, place it in a 10-minute
ultra-violet light "bath" for erasing its contents before burning into
it a modified version of my BIOS code under development. And this
cycle is typicaly repetitive, time-consuming, tedious and cumbersome.

Or I could get MAME and load it with the ROM image of my experimental
BIOS code and check whether it works or not on the emulated
environment. For that usage scenario there's no need to download and
use the original non-free ROMs. This shows that MAME as an emulation
environment free software project, can have much more legitimate uses
than simply "playing thousands of (mostly non-free) games for free".



On Thu, Mar 31, 2016 at 2:14 PM, Jason Self <address@hidden> wrote:
> J.B. Nicholson <address@hidden> wrote ..
>> Julian Marchant wrote:
>> > As far as I know, all Flash objects are non-libre.
>>
>> How do you figure this?
>
> I think they are referring to the ActionScript code [0] to construct the
> player (or whatever else.) It is usually not free which means that you're
> still running non-free software in the end, even if you're using a free
> software player like Gnash to interpret it and just "watching the video."
> It seems to be a similar problem to the JavaScript Trap [1].
>
> [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActionScript
> [1] https://gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html