If you’ve ever used a computer then chances are that you’ve at least come across VLC or even used it. VLC, developed by VideoLAN, is arguably the most widely used third-party media player in the world. This is thanks to its ability to play almost just about any other media file format. While its success on the desktop has not been replicated on mobile, where the world has moved to, it continues to be overwhelmingly popular. Would you believe it that it has been 15 years since VLC first became available to the general public?
VideoLAN President and lead developer Jean-Baptiste Kempf took to his blog to mark VLC’s teenage milestone noting that the app has seen over 2 billion downloads over its decade and a half existence.
From its humble beginnings in 1999 when it was the preserve of a few students at École Centrale Paris in France who used it to stream videos from satellite dishes across their local campus network, VLC has grown to serve hundreds of millions of users around the world. This has been made possible by the over 700 contributors who have in one way or the other had some input by way of code and other software development tasks.
Fact: VLC got a GNU General Public License (GPL) on 1st February 2000 making it accessible to everyone.
