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VLC for iOS returns on July 19, rewritten and fully open-sourced

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Re: VLC for iOS returns on July 19, rewritten and fully open-sourced

#71
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MPlayer works in the Linux world, but the app itself has no stable releases outside of that so it doesn't have traction beyond Linux. Unless you count things like SMPlayer (Windows-specific front-end and MPlayer backend) and the like. MPC-HC is pretty popular in the Windows world. But neither of them come close to approaching VLC's userbase. We make SMPlayer, MPC-HC and VLC all available in portable form at PortableA…

There are some MPlayer-powered releases for OS X too, e.g. http://mplayerx.org There are others too, though I'm not sure what the differences are.

There are a bunch of them on Windows, too. It's hard to keep track of them all.

Re: VLC for iOS returns on July 19, rewritten and fully open-sourced

#72
post #27
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See my blogposts on LGPL relicensing of VLC engine http://www.jbkempf.com/blog/post/2012/I-did-it Note that the relicensing was not done for the iOS port. And the app above the VLC engine is dual licensed GPLv2/MPLv2

Bradley Kuhn (who has worked for FSF for license stuff) says LGPL does not help. http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2012/11/22/vlc-lgpl.html

His opinion is just that, an opinion, whether or not they are correct. The fact of the matter is that no one else except the VLC team can initiate legal proceedings and Bradley Kuhn has no right to do so, unless he makes a contribution.

Re: VLC for iOS returns on July 19, rewritten and fully open-sourced

#73
post #19
post #18

I was trying to install VLC on my android nexus 4 the other day and apparently it's not in the Play store? I ended up installing "Joe VLC" instead. I wonder if there will be an official android release?

We are not happy yet on the quality of VLC for Android, so it is not out of beta. However, you can try yourself here: http://nightlies.videolan.org/build/armv7-android/VLC-debug-...

Are there any plans to make the Play Store beta available to North American users?

From what I recall, the issue was not having NA devices to test against. It seems like the gaps in chipsets and devices have narrowed (e.g. Qualcomm chipsets used more widely as LTE spreads, US Note 2 using Exynos 4 like the international versions, etc.) so I was wondering if anything had changed on that front.

Re: VLC for iOS returns on July 19, rewritten and fully open-sourced

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can the end-user then replace the executable on their iOS device ? That is the problem.

Get a developer license? The LGPL 2.x does not disallow tivioization. (Thank god)

That sounds like an "additional restriction" to me if you have to pay Apple.

Re: VLC for iOS returns on July 19, rewritten and fully open-sourced

#77
post #16

I much prefer OPlayer. Great features, plays nearly any file I throw at it, and supports WiFi transfers.

OPlayer has smoother playback for me. I just tried VLC and the first video I tried it said the hardware was to slow to play it. I'm using a 4G iPod Touch. So I converted some some videos with Handbreak using the iPod Touch preset. I tried about ten converted videos and none of them played smoothly. OPlayer handles all of them.

Re: VLC for iOS returns on July 19, rewritten and fully open-sourced

#78
post #69
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bradley Kuhn (who has worked for FSF for license stuff) says LGPL does not help. http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2012/11/22/vlc-lgpl.html

Oh, then fuck FSF and drop LGPL. It's their product after all. If they can get a license change, they can get another, can't they?

But as Bradley says if this was the reason for the license change why did they not switch to eg BSD? Something that would solve the problem definitively.

Re: VLC for iOS returns on July 19, rewritten and fully open-sourced

#80
post #19
post #18

I was trying to install VLC on my android nexus 4 the other day and apparently it's not in the Play store? I ended up installing "Joe VLC" instead. I wonder if there will be an official android release?

We are not happy yet on the quality of VLC for Android, so it is not out of beta. However, you can try yourself here: http://nightlies.videolan.org/build/armv7-android/VLC-debug-...

Haha, I didn't know VLC alpha wasn't available outside of Europe(France?) on Play Store ! I'm happy to know it can work both ways =)

Seriously though, I understand the constraints, especially since VLC is trying to use hardware acceleration when available, then not testing on real devices can really affect quality (crashing alpha? 1-star on play store!)

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