What is MAME
============

MAME is a multi-purpose emulation framework.

MAME's purpose is to preserve decades of software history. As electronic technology continues to rush forward, MAME prevents this important "vintage" software from being lost and forgotten. This is achieved by documenting the hardware and how it functions. The source code to MAME serves as this documentation. The fact that the software is usable serves primarily to validate the accuracy of the documentation (how else can you prove that you have recreated the hardware faithfully?). Over time, MAME (originally stood for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) absorbed the sister-project MESS (Multi Emulator Super System), so MAME now documents a wide variety of (mostly vintage) computers, video game consoles and calculators, in addition to the arcade video games that were its initial focus.

|
| **MAME®**
| **Copyright © 1997-2021 by Nicola Salmoria and the MAME team**
| **MAME is a registered trademark owned by Gregory Ember**
|


I. Purpose
----------

MAME's main purpose is to be a reference to the inner workings of the
emulated machines. This is done both for educational purposes and for
preservation purposes, in order to prevent historical software from
disappearing forever once the hardware it runs on stops working. Of
course, in order to preserve the software and demonstrate that the
emulated behavior matches the original, one must also be able to
actually use the software. This is considered a nice side effect, and is
not MAME's primary focus.

It is not our intention to infringe on any copyrights or patents on the
original games. All of MAME's source code is either our own or freely
available. To operate, the emulator requires images of the original
ROMs, CDs, hard disks or other media from the machines, which must be
provided by the user. No portions of the original game code are included
in the executable.


II. Cost
--------
MAME is free. Its source code is free. The project as whole is
distributed under the GNU General Public License, version 2 or later
(GPL-2.0+), but most of code (including core functionality) is also
available under the 3-clause BSD license (BSD-3-clause).


III. Software Image Files
-------------------------

ROM, CD, hard disk and other media images are all copyrighted material.
They cannot be distributed without the explicit permission of the
copyright holder(s). They are not "abandonware", nor has any of the
software supported by MAME passed out of copyright.

MAME is not intended to be used as a tool for mass copyright
infringement. Therefore, it is strongly against the authors' wishes to
sell, advertise, or link to resources that provide illegal copies of
ROM, CD, hard disk or other media images.


IV. Derivative Works
--------------------
Because the name MAME is trademarked, you must abide by the rules set
out for trademark usage if you wish to use "MAME" as part of the name
your derivative work. In general, this means you must request
permission, which requires that you follow the guidelines above.

The version number of any derivative work should reflect the version
number of the MAME release from which it was was derived.


V. Official Contact Information
-------------------------------
For questions regarding the MAME license, trademark, or other usage, go to http://www.mamedev.org/
