I seem to notice that there is no request to remove emulation of the systems, but only the links to the ROMs
Correct, and such a request for the emulators won't be possible at all: it's definitely not forbidden to write an emulator for whatever program/system you want, as long as you don't use any original code.
And so removing the Vancouver emulation from the Mess-SVN a few days ago is absolutely incomprehensible for me!
While they're not legally obligated to do so, MAME has removed drivers at the request of the rights holders before.
Entirely as a gesture of good-will tho, the dev team prefers to stay on the side of active arcade developers, not work against them. In this case it's a system from 1984, which to my knowledge hasn't been sold for many years in a field where the technology has advanced significantly since it was released in the first place.
I don't think MAMEdev would feel obliged to remove such a driver.
