Does this mean VLC will be back on the App Store? I remember it being pulled due to a contributor (who around ~2010 worked for Nokia) complaining to Apple.
Possibly, yes. But so far, iOS aout and vout are not LGPL.
VLC Core is LGPL
31–40 of 149 posts
Re: VLC Core is LGPL
#32So every contributor essentially gets to vote on the license change, and their vote is proportional to the contribution they made (because if they vote no, their contributed code has to be rewritten). I think I quite like it, but only because there is an option to replace their code if they vote no (which admittedly may be very technically difficult). No single contributor can truly veto the license change. Clearly h…
I did delete some code, and rewrote some. But not for many people.
Re: VLC Core is LGPL
#33The really interesting story is the how(linked from main article): Part 2 (probably the more interesting): http://www.jbkempf.com/blog/post/2012/How-to-properly-relice... Part 1: http://www.jbkempf.com/blog/post/2012/How-to-properly-relice...
Part 3 is coming soon, about FAQ and numbers, but part2 is probably the most interesting one, indeed.
Re: VLC Core is LGPL
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why is it a shame?
Because while every piece of free software is a wound against proprietary software, the more liberal licences like LGPL and the BSD/MIT-style licences are a wound against free software: proprietary interests can take free code without giving anything back.
Yes, they can, which doesn't mean they will.
I understand you may not like BSD/MIT, but LGPL seems pretty reasonable to me. It all depends on how big/important your software is... if it's something that you're sure you'll never be able to make a living out of and that may be useful for others, why ask for anything else other than an acknowledgement?
Re: VLC Core is LGPL
#35On a reading of how it was done, I guess if anyone had contributed stuff under the GPL and particularly objected to LGPL relicensing the could probably still make arguments about derivative works... Interestingly there's no mention of dissenting opinions from anywhere. Not that I'm implying that this move is a bad thing, I would just expect if you ask a large enough group of developers any question about licensing yo…
The commit message includes in its list of modules which are not converted: - iOS audio output and video display, because author refuses the license change - Mono, Headphone and Dolby, because author refuses the license change So there is some dissenting opinion.
2 authors out of 230 is not that much... And for example, the author of headphone objected only on Headphone and Dolby, but allowed the rest of his code to be changed.
Re: VLC Core is LGPL
#36Congratulations to Jean-Baptiste, that's been an incredible arduous piece of work for him.
Thanks a lot :)
Re: VLC Core is LGPL
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
What does other players do better than vlc?
VLC struggles with DVD playback. In fact most DVDs this year will simply not play at all in VLC due to the menus causing it to crash. Some random examples: Thor, The Dictator, The Avengers Assemble, (essentially everything published by "Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment", and many things published by "Paramount Home Entertainment") Now one might say to "just disable menus!" but unfortunately that is ineffective…
This is resolved in development version, and for half of them in 2.0.4.
Re: VLC Core is LGPL
#38This is my website :) (I did not expect that to come on HN, to be honest) Anyway, the title is, of course, misleading. VLC core, named libVLCcore is LGPL since last year (I did it too in december) and the wrapper for 3rd party applications libVLC was relicensed too at the same time. This is different, since most modules of VLC are now LGPL. We speak about codecs, demuxers, format parsers, protocol accesses, filter an…
How does that play with the iOS VLC port?
The one that a VLC contributor working for Nokia (Rémi Denis-Courmont) managed to take down, for not being in compliance with GPL?
Re: VLC Core is LGPL
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
What does other players do better than vlc?
Subtitle rendering (with xy-vsfilter/vsfilter in general and newer versions of libass). High-quality video rendering (madVR). I'm not at home right now so I can't reliably confirm if certain long-time issues still remain in the latest version (2.0.4), but VLC has also for the longest time had issues with pause not being completely instant (despite claiming so), the audio glitching slightly when pausing/unpausing, and…
Subtitles rendering of VLC 2.0.x is quite high quality, since the video output changes of 2.0.
Audio pausing is fixed since a long time on all platforms and on development version for Windows.
Seeking on H.264 and MKV ordered chapters issues have been solved since quite some time too.
Subtitles quality has nothing to do with libass, but the video output rendering, and this was fixed in 2.0.
madVR is very CPU heavy, and is EVR only, so not usable for cross-platform.
Re: VLC Core is LGPL
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because better and equally free and open source alternatives have existed for about as long yet remain more unknown. VLC sure plays a lot of things, but it's a a real jack of all trades and master of none. I certainly understand it's appeal, but there's certainly better yet equally simple solutions out there as well (eg. CCCP for Windows, various MPlayer2 bundles for OS X like MPlayer.app). Of course, the "downside"…
"jack of all trades" = superior product "master of one" = inferior product see also: Worse Is Better, Innovator's Dilemma
The difference here is that the better players also play a similarly wide range of formats (since it generally all comes down to libavcodec at some point), but due to various factors they overall do it better. I keep VLC installed for testing purposes and as a backup were my main playback setup with MPC-HC ever fail to play something, but I've never actually had to resort to VLC for this reason.