<story><title>The team that powers VLC</title><url>https://increment.com/teams/the-team-that-powers-vlc/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jbk</author><text>(disclaimer: president of VideoLAN here and old VLC dev)&lt;p&gt;What&amp;#x27;s interesting in this article (quite accurate, for once)  is the focus on the size of the team, which is quite small; and on the development process. And how the team are now friends more than co-developers...&lt;p&gt;In fact, VLC is ported - and maintained - in a very large number of platforms (probably more than Firefox, Chrome, Office or Libreoffice) with Android (+TV), ChromeOS, iOS&amp;#x2F;iPadOS, AppleTV, WinRT&amp;amp;Xbox, Windows (XP+), macOS (10.7+), Linux, Unixes, BSD, OS&amp;#x2F;2. While the core team has always been around 5 persons, and always less than 10. And most developers have been working on their free time...&lt;p&gt;The VideoLAN non-profit needs also to maintain quite a bit of infra (updater, crash reporter, bugtracker, forum, wiki, ml, gitlab, git) for a lot of projects (not only VLC, but things like x264 and dav1d) and do support, appstores, PR, translations and partnerships (the only way to get support from MS, Google or Apple).&lt;p&gt;Sure, VLC is probably not always the best for your usecase, and there are probably better solutions for each platform, but we are consistent, completely open source and open process, therefore people can trust the project and the brand: VLC will be around in 5 years, and we will do our best to port on all platforms, in an open way. A lot of players come and go, but the project is structured so it can last.&lt;p&gt;Since HN is a technical crowd, we&amp;#x27;re currently working on 2 fun projects: VLC.js and integrating sandboxing inside VLC :)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tahdig</author><text>&amp;gt; Sure, VLC is probably not always the best for your usecase&lt;p&gt;VLC is both consistent and almost always the best media player for the platform. I especially love your Android UI&amp;#x2F;UX.&lt;p&gt;It has been my go-to player for ~14 years now, installed it on my high school desktop windows, my university linux and now work MBP and personal Android never disappointed me. Thanks for keeping up the quality work, I give you as example of good quality open-source project when the topic comes up.&lt;p&gt;Do you have any &amp;quot;need&amp;quot; for a fullstack&amp;#x2F;infra kind of person? Or any place we can see what know-how needs you have at the moment?&lt;p&gt;Would love to get involved with my limited capacity.&lt;p&gt;Also thanks for staying open source and privacy conscious.</text></comment>
<story><title>The team that powers VLC</title><url>https://increment.com/teams/the-team-that-powers-vlc/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jbk</author><text>(disclaimer: president of VideoLAN here and old VLC dev)&lt;p&gt;What&amp;#x27;s interesting in this article (quite accurate, for once)  is the focus on the size of the team, which is quite small; and on the development process. And how the team are now friends more than co-developers...&lt;p&gt;In fact, VLC is ported - and maintained - in a very large number of platforms (probably more than Firefox, Chrome, Office or Libreoffice) with Android (+TV), ChromeOS, iOS&amp;#x2F;iPadOS, AppleTV, WinRT&amp;amp;Xbox, Windows (XP+), macOS (10.7+), Linux, Unixes, BSD, OS&amp;#x2F;2. While the core team has always been around 5 persons, and always less than 10. And most developers have been working on their free time...&lt;p&gt;The VideoLAN non-profit needs also to maintain quite a bit of infra (updater, crash reporter, bugtracker, forum, wiki, ml, gitlab, git) for a lot of projects (not only VLC, but things like x264 and dav1d) and do support, appstores, PR, translations and partnerships (the only way to get support from MS, Google or Apple).&lt;p&gt;Sure, VLC is probably not always the best for your usecase, and there are probably better solutions for each platform, but we are consistent, completely open source and open process, therefore people can trust the project and the brand: VLC will be around in 5 years, and we will do our best to port on all platforms, in an open way. A lot of players come and go, but the project is structured so it can last.&lt;p&gt;Since HN is a technical crowd, we&amp;#x27;re currently working on 2 fun projects: VLC.js and integrating sandboxing inside VLC :)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>gen3</author><text>Thank you for staying a nonprofit; I&amp;#x27;m sure you have received many offers in the past.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m glad to have been a user of VLC since I first got a computer. I happily install &amp;#x2F; recommend it to family and friends. It does what it needs to do very well, and without bloat.</text></comment>