News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:The team that powers VLC by jbk on Sunday November 24, 2019 @04:28PM (#21623555)
(disclaimer: president of VideoLAN here and old VLC dev)

What'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...

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/iPadOS, AppleTV, WinRT&Xbox, Windows (XP+), macOS (10.7+), Linux, Unixes, BSD, OS/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...

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).

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.

Since HN is a technical crowd, we're currently working on 2 fun projects: VLC.js and integrating sandboxing inside VLC :)

Re:The team that powers VLC by tahdig on Sunday November 24, 2019 @07:52PM (#21624633)
> Sure, VLC is probably not always the best for your usecase

VLC is both consistent and almost always the best media player for the platform. I especially love your Android UI/UX.

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.

Do you have any "need" for a fullstack/infra kind of person? Or any place we can see what know-how needs you have at the moment?

Would love to get involved with my limited capacity.

Also thanks for staying open source and privacy conscious.

Re:The team that powers VLC by jbk on Sunday November 24, 2019 @11:45PM (#21625532)
> Do you have any "need" for a fullstack/infra kind of person?

Yes, we do. Both web (JS for VLC and for our website), backend (Go) and infra are needed.

And currently, people who are able to write Ruby to improve gitlab upstream.

Re:The team that powers VLC by f3ndot on Monday November 25, 2019 @12:21AM (#21625670)
> people who are able to write Ruby to improve gitlab upstream.

This I am able to do. How can I help?

I've contributed in very small ways previously (getting libdav1d into Handbrake[1], designing the dav1d logo[2]). Would love to be able to offer my time in a domain I'm skilled in.

[1]: https://github.com/HandBrake/HandBrake/pull/1864

[2]: https://code.videolan.org/videolan/dav1d/merge_requests/681

Re:The team that powers VLC by jokowueu on Monday November 25, 2019 @12:24AM (#21625685)
Their vlc UI on Android is an issue for me because it overlaps the ANDROID ui buttons (home back etc )
Re:The team that powers VLC by jbk on Monday November 25, 2019 @03:32AM (#21626372)
This is a bug in your Android ROM, not in VLC. We try to work-around those bugs, but we need to do that, one by one. It is tricky.

What ROM do you have?

Re:The team that powers VLC by jokowueu on Monday November 25, 2019 @08:26AM (#21627878)
I'm using a stock rom Android 9 . My phone is a one plus 6 . Maybe it's an issue with notch compatibility .
Re:The team that powers VLC by tahdig on Monday November 25, 2019 @05:35PM (#21633537)
My OnePlus 6T is fine as far as I can tell.

It is Android 10 but was fine in 9 also.

Re:The team that powers VLC by gen3 on Sunday November 24, 2019 @04:39PM (#21623630)
Thank you for staying a nonprofit; I'm sure you have received many offers in the past.

I'm glad to have been a user of VLC since I first got a computer. I happily install / recommend it to family and friends. It does what it needs to do very well, and without bloat.

Re:The team that powers VLC by Stratoscope on Sunday November 24, 2019 @05:14PM (#21623815)
Here's a discussion of one such offer:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15372048

Re:The team that powers VLC by inthewings on Sunday November 24, 2019 @11:01PM (#21625360)
We still get shady offers every week
Re:The team that powers VLC by S-E-P on Sunday November 24, 2019 @11:25PM (#21625443)
I remember, years ago, when VLC was fairly unknown and my dad asked if I knew what VLC was... he was convinced it was adware as he had never seen it before and when you clicked on it, nothing really happened.

I looked it up after he uninstalled the nothing-burger of an application. Found your website and decided to download it. I remember malware would masquerade as real software a lot back then and it wasn’t that far out.

Installed it and ever since has been my favorite for watching anything, and helped streaming files and the like.

VLC is awesome and I haven’t stopped using it since.

Re:The team that powers VLC by bluetwo on Sunday November 24, 2019 @09:35PM (#21624998)
I give you folks a lot of credit for building a professional ecosystem on top of a brilliant but constantly moving target (FFMPEG). Well done.
Re:The team that powers VLC by jbk on Sunday November 24, 2019 @11:46PM (#21625535)
We also support FFmpeg, in the way we can (infra and sponsoring of new features).
Re:The team that powers VLC by js2 on Sunday November 24, 2019 @09:39PM (#21625014)
VLC is the only thing I can use on my AppleTV to access my local Plex server when my Internet connection is down. It's almost the only time I use VLC but so worth it when I need it. Thank you and the team for all your work over the years.
Re:The team that powers VLC by ShamelessC on Sunday November 24, 2019 @10:07PM (#21625116)
Wait, you can access Plex from VLC?
Re:The team that powers VLC by jbk on Sunday November 24, 2019 @11:47PM (#21625541)
Re:The team that powers VLC by unixhero on Monday November 25, 2019 @12:26AM (#21625696)
Whoa! The plot thickens.

Thanks for the insight!

Re:The team that powers VLC by voltagex_ on Sunday November 24, 2019 @10:55PM (#21625337)
via DLNA, I assume.
Re:The team that powers VLC by giancarlostoro on Sunday November 24, 2019 @05:30PM (#21623924)
Curious are there open discussions or articles about VLC.js? Is it possible this may include decoders in some form? I sort of hope VLC.js isnt just Emscripten. Would be nicer if the open web benefits. I have been using the audio and video HTML tags lately and am disappointed by how limited they are and how cubbersome styling them is. You literally hide the out of the box components instead of being able to style those directly.
Re:The team that powers VLC by inthewings on Sunday November 24, 2019 @10:55PM (#21625340)
That's full VLC in wasm.
Re:The team that powers VLC by xmichael999 on Sunday November 24, 2019 @07:41PM (#21624591)
Thank you for all the time and energy you put into this amazing project!
Re:The team that powers VLC by 8bitsrule on Sunday November 24, 2019 @07:54PM (#21624638)
Besides using VLC to watch my video collection, and listen to albums, I use this program daily to organize and stream a plethora of internet radio stations. It's almost always running. It's an incredibly useful creation, and very much appreciated. Merci beaucoup!
Re:The team that powers VLC by dakom on Monday November 25, 2019 @05:07AM (#21626780)
Hey - around ~3 years ago or so I was dabbling with writing a libVLC module to handle custom encryption and jumped on the IRC channel to get help. Was a great experience all around!

Curious about VLC.js - is there a recommended way to get updates on that project?

I'm particularly interested in if/how you plan to integrate encryption via the browser's built-in EME stuff.

(also, fwiw, I think libVLC is not famous enough, considering how popular VLC is!)

Re:The team that powers VLC by markosaric on Monday November 25, 2019 @01:36AM (#21625947)
Thanks for all the work you guys are doing in keeping it open source and human-friendly! I recently moved from Mac to Linux and VLC was one of those friendly apps that I had to install there too so thanks for making sure it's available on all platforms too. Runs so fast and always just works!
Re:The team that powers VLC by ynx on Sunday November 24, 2019 @09:16PM (#21624937)
What kind of sandboxing, and what are the most relevant source files to look at? I don't know much about sandboxing but I've been interested in learning more for a while. It would be cool to see how a Real Project(tm) approaches it.
Re:The team that powers VLC by inthewings on Sunday November 24, 2019 @10:59PM (#21625355)
Sept 2017 Talk about sandboxing

https://vimeo.com/269079774

Re:The team that powers VLC by jbk on Sunday November 24, 2019 @11:48PM (#21625544)
> What kind of sandboxing

Sandboxing between the different stages of VLC, because each require different control needs.

Re:The team that powers VLC by isaacdl on Sunday November 24, 2019 @06:21PM (#21624227)
Yeah, huge thanks so much for a really phenomenal tool! In my group of (admittedly fairly technical) friends, "download thyself a traffic cone" is a fairly common thing to hear when encountering an AV issue :)
Re:The team that powers VLC by vonseel on Sunday November 24, 2019 @09:30PM (#21624977)
What’s the est development burden to add support for Split Screen in Mac OS? I noticed VLC doesn’t support this yet and wasn’t sure if it’s going to be a huge thing to add or not.
Re:The team that powers VLC by jbk on Sunday November 24, 2019 @11:49PM (#21625548)
The official API mandates using AVPlayer to use it. You can hack it, but it's not supported, so we're not sure if we should do it or not.
Re:The team that powers VLC by paggle on Monday November 25, 2019 @03:07AM (#21626279)
Probably not the best for my usecase? What sublime properties of optimal media players have I been missing out on by using exclusively VLC for more than a decade?
Re:The team that powers VLC by saagarjha on Sunday November 24, 2019 @04:36PM (#21623605)
Could you expand a bit on the two projects, or send me a link to a place where I can learn more?
Re:The team that powers VLC by jbk on Sunday November 24, 2019 @11:51PM (#21625553)
VLC.js is porting the full VLC in wasm, to be able to play everything inside a webpage.

Sandboxing is a way of securing VLC, so that when it crashes, the machine is not compromised. It's a bit more complex than simple sandboxing, since simple sandboxing is not useful (we have access to everything).

Re:The team that powers VLC by ddingus on Sunday November 24, 2019 @10:57PM (#21625345)
Thanks for what you do and how you do it. I love, use and recommend VLC constantly.
Re:The team that powers VLC by gjs278 on Sunday November 24, 2019 @07:40PM (#21624589)
your software arbitrarily restricts root usage. no other software does.
Re:The team that powers VLC by michaelmrose on Monday November 25, 2019 @12:06AM (#21625621)
There are probably more people accidentally running vlc with root privileges than people who run a gui login as root.

It should be hard to do poorly thought out things.

Re:The team that powers VLC by jbk on Monday November 25, 2019 @03:33AM (#21626380)
You have a wrapper if you know what you are doing, that is shipped besides the binary.