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→Source-available software
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Despite this, non-commercial licenses have long been seen as a desirable or even essential option by some emulator developers for a multitude of reasons. One commonly given reason is to specifically pre-empt others from bundling their code into a proprietary payware package (even though this would also be a flagrant violation of copyleft licenses like the GPLv3) or using it in a pre-built [[Emulation Boxes|emulation box]] without their explicit permission. There are also some devs who prefer to explicitly denote their emulators as "non-commercial software" because they're concerned about the original hardware manufacturer taking them to court, despite the fact that [[#Legality of emulation|the manufacturer's only grounds to stand on is whether the underlying technology behind a console is patented]].
Whatever reason the dev gives for a non-commercial clause in the software license, it '''should''' be of no consequence to the typical emulator end-user who just wants to play console games on their PC. Some specific circumstances, such as a developer who's making a brand new commercial game for an old system and using an emulator to test it in lieu of real hardware, might be exceptions to this, but that's where it gets pretty murky from a legal standpoint.
