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The video at the end of the press release explains the story. But in tl;dr: form: Ecole Centrale Paris campus network was managed by students. In 1995, they w
by jbk 6y ago
The video at the end of the press release explains the story.
But in tl;dr: form:
Ecole Centrale Paris campus network was managed by students. In 1995, they wanted a faster network, to play video games, and upgrade from their Token Ring network.
The Univ did not want to pay so they went to see partners, and one said "put the satellite feed on your network to justify the need for a better network. We'll pay for it, instead of having 2000 dishes and decoders.". This PoC "Network 2000" was a success. Some students restarted the project in 1998 and called it VideoLAN.
In 2001, VideoLAN and all the software projects (Server, Client, network, libraries) became GPL. VideoLan Client became VLC. Community added Windows, macOS support.
In 2008, I created the VideoLAN non-profit to escape the university and make VLC grow.
- a-dub 6y agowas "network 2000" multicast? how similar/different was it to xing streamworks (commercial multicast mpeg suite from that time)?
- jbk 6y agoIt was an ATM backbone, but the routers did not support mcast. So they cheated to do multicast on a non-multicast network.
- Debug_Overload 6y agoThank you guys for the great work! VLC is just great.
- rootsudo 6y ago2008 makes sense, about the time where k-lite codec pack and media player classic started to be eclipsed! Wow. Thank you for the best video player out there, for all those exciting, strange and exciting codecs!
- stuff4ben 6y agoAh I have fun memories of configuring Token Ring networks and playing with Novell NetWare to get my lab to connect properly. I can see why you'd want to upgrade from that though, 4Mbps was pretty pokey, even back then.
- consumer451 6y agoThank you so much for keeping VideoLAN not greedy! Can you share any stories about offers to monetize thoroughly?
- zengargoyle 6y agoHeh, I remember VideoLan from early 2k research university days and using it to play multicast video streams out of places like JPL and other uni test things. The LOL let's do something to justify better network rings so, so true.
- userbinator 6y ago...so that's why it's called VideoLAN/VLC. I've always thought it was an odd name for a media player.
- exikyut 6y agoTo clarify, the partner you went to was referring to paying for the costs to get the satellite feed onto the LAN, as opposed to footing the bill for upgrading the network? Assuming the former, that is a very nice intersection of deploying the technically most ideal solution, and business management.