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Comment by Zev | Hacker News Reader

Interesting that it took 10 days for this news to get out. Kind of makes me feel like Mac OS X isn't exactly a high priority for the people behind VLC?

I do hope that they find a dev though.

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The people behind VLC are whoever shows up, so I'd say VLC isn't a high priority for OS X open source volunteers.

That's a shame because VLC is by far the best media tool I've ever used on OS X in terms of playback compatibility.

I think that largely used to be true ... but nowadays with tools like Perian and Mplayer OSX Extended it's definitely no longer the case. With Snow Leopard, VLC is actually the weakest of the media players in terms of stability and performance, in my opinion.

Comment grandparent explains why.

Not the original commenter, but here is my take on it on Snow Leopard: I use QuickTime X a lot for its h.264 hardware acceleration. As of now, that's the only option you have if you want to play 1080p on Mac. Coupled with Perian, I think it solves the majority of playback issues with a rather simple user interface. Then I use MPlayer OS X Extended for its better support for MKV, subs, DTS, AC3, etc. And it has a very simple interface like the original QuickTime player (< X). So really, there's much less need for VLC on that platform...

Isn't there a nonprofit behind VLC? I was mostly wondering what what their focus is on. Is their focus primarily licensing issues?

http://www.videolan.org/contribute.html

They have a nonprofit, but it looks like they don't use it to pay developers. I didn't see any financials, so I don't know whether they just don't have enough money to pay developers or they have consciously decided not to (see http://wiki.mako.cc/Crowding_out ).

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