Summary
We live in a world where every other app you come across asks for a subscription, and this is no hyperbole! The other option is to trade your privacy or suffer the monstrosity that are ads. This practice of compelling users to choose between privacy and payment has become so widespread that VLC media player seems like an outlier more than ever. If you haven’t appreciated this versatile media player for handling even the most corrupt media files you throw at it, you will now, as it stays ad-free and privacy-friendly. This, however, raises a crucial question: how does VLC media player stay alive? Well, the story of how VLC media player stays alive is one of the biggest anti-business success stories! VLC never wanted your money No ads, no upsells, no catch anywhere Since its release in 2001, VLC media player has been one of the most downloaded and widely used utility apps. It is currently available for Windows, Linux, macOS, Android, and iOS. Over the years, VLC media player has been downloaded a whopping six billion times, which is no small number. Yet, despite the huge potential for marketing, monetization, and everything else related to money, we haven’t come across a single advertisement, a sponsored link, or any upselling messages while using VLC media player. It would be somewhat incorrect to assume that the developers behind VLC media player had this deliberate aim from the very beginning. Instead, its anti-business stance has more to do with the way this media player became a widely used app in the first place. VLC media player, formerly known as VideoLAN Client, had its humble beginnings as a student project at the French École Centrale Paris in 1996. This was based on the students’ need to stream content reliably and involved a two-part system consisting of one server and one client. After 1998, VLC media player became open source and has been maintained by developers around the world ever since. It is currently supported by VideoLAN Organization, based in France, and is powered by a committee chaired by Jean-Baptiste Kempf. It is worth noting that VLC media player isn’t a company; it is managed by a registered nonprofit called VideoLAN. It also means VLC isn’t concerned with IPOs, venture funding, or acquisitions for that matter. However, it’s not like companies haven’t tried to purchase VLC. Nobody can buy VLC, and that’s the point Ownership is split among too many people to sell Though many entities have attempted to purchase VLC and use it for advertising, promotion, and whatnot, VideoLAN has stood its ground. More importantly, the ownership of VLC media player is also unique, so no one can actually buy VLC. As we said before, VideoLAN is a French non-profit association with no CEO or founder with equity rights. There is no board that can vote on whether to sell the VLC media player to someone. Even if a company were to purchase VLC media player, it would still need permission from hundreds of people who have voluntarily contributed to the project (in terms of code, translations, or documentation). Now, hypothetically, even if a company manages to get approval from all the developers who contributed to VLC, there are other factors that make the purchase non-viable. The chief of them has to deal with how VLC is licensed. In addition to the VLC trademark and the domain names being controlled by the non-profit, the VLC media player codebase is licensed under the GPL. That means anyone on Earth can create a fork of VLC, so purchasing this GPL license and creating a paid product from it would be pretty useless from a monetization perspective. So, a business may buy the domain name and the name VLC media player, but it cannot control what people do with the codebase. If this isn’t the most practical manifestation of an anti-business stance, I don’t know what is. It plays every file you’re ashamed of Your cursed 2007 AVI finally has a home You couldn’t have missed how VLC media player handles almost every media file you throw at it. It doesn’t matter whether you have a decade-old AVI file or modern 4K footage, VLC plays it with grace! Now, it manages to do so thanks to the conventions VideoLAN and its contributors have followed from the start. As you may know, VLC has built a decoder library based on FFmpeg/libavcodec, and it is shipped with every version of VLC for all platforms. It means VLC media player doesn’t have to rely on the operating system’s codec pack. Now, other media players may exploit the lack of full codec packs at the OS level for monetization, but VideoLAN consistently ignores it. The result? The player plays anything you throw at it. You might also want to consider the fact that it can easily handle broken files that other options, like QuickTime or Windows Media Player, wouldn’t even touch. Similarly, its support for external subtitles or audio track handling is comparable to that of no other option. It is worth noting that all these features are available across platforms, rather than offering a toned-down version of the main app on mobile devices. All these aspects also contribute to the reputation mechanism the VLC media player follows, which relies on word-of-mouth more than anything else. You are unlikely to see advertisements or promotional campaigns from VLC, but it has remained one of the most trusted options for the past 20 years. Free doesn’t mean flawless My unending reverence for VLC media player and its anti-business success story hasn’t stopped me from critiquing it or exploring alternatives, though. As you may have noticed, VLC’s interface has remained dated for a long time, and there’s no consistent update schedule either. Because the entire development relies on volunteers, you cannot predict these aspects beyond a point. Regardless, VLC media player hasn’t let this structure affect reliability or performance. As long as that continues, I will happily recommend VLC to everyone! VLC can read every format ever invented, from modern files to the digital relics on old drives. It opens whatever you throw at it, turning your device into a centralized hub for all your scattered media.