VideoLAN 20 years

VideoLAN (VLC) is a free, open source multi-platform media player and environment that plays most media files and DVD-VCDs as well as Audio CDs and various streaming protocols. VLC media player (previously the VideoLAN Client and commonly known as simply VLC) is a free and open-source, portable, cross-platform media player software, and streaming media server developed by the VideoLAN project. VLC is available for desktop operating systems and many mobile platforms. In addition to viewing video, VLC can be used to encode video to various video formats (including streaming). The default distribution of VLC includes many free decoding and encoding libraries.

The VideoLAN project and the VideoLAN non-profit organization are happy to celebrate today the 20th anniversary of the open-sourcing of the project. 20 years ago, VideoLAN moved from a closed-source student project to the GNU GPL. The release of the project to the world was on 1st of February 2001.

This open sourcing concerned all the software developed by the VideoLAN project, including VideoLAN Client, VideoLAN Server, VideoLAN Bridge, VideoLAN Channel Switcher, but also libraries to decode DVDs, like libdca, liba52 or libmpeg2.

Earlier VideoLAN postings:
https://www.epanorama.net/blog/2013/10/07/vlc-media-player-version-2-1/
https://www.epanorama.net/blog/2015/02/27/vlc-gets-first-major-release-across-windows-mac-linux-android-ios-windows-phone-windows-rt-and-android-tv-venturebeat-media-by-emil-protalinski/