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Comment by koreanguy | Hacker News Reader

vlc is heading towards itunes style business model, which means subscriptions are to be introduced into videolan, they are probably planning on adding content service, already sounds like a bloatware, monetization of videolan by the developers will be the end of vlc.

alternatives mplayer,mpv

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Do you have any pointers to the claims you are putting forward ? Absolutely nothing in the history of the project, in the speeches of the founder and main maintainer and the webpage agree with anything you say.

The guy does say in the video that they are trying to appeal to users who are used to streaming services and help with content discovery. He didn't really say how but it is logical to assume that it points to integration of 3rd party streaming services.

Yes, VLC will probably be able to read from new sources because the web as a distribution platform is dead, every content publisher has their own way of working that doesn't interoperate with others. That doesn't mean VLC will start creating a business model around that.

Or, they could go the PopcornTime way, integrating with torrent engines and other alternative distribution methods.

(It won't happen, because of the persecution of developers of torrent-aware software by content-owning companies, but it would work.)

There already was a discussion of adding bittorrent to VLC somehow, but IIRC they didn't want to include it in the core distribution of VLC for fear of copyright owners

It looks a bit like iTunes so he must be right!

Oh wait, VideoLAN is a non-profit? A core developer only mentions that they adapt to what people want, explicitly mentioning streaming and Netflix, not some soon to be announced competitor? A Qt Desktop conference is also hardly the platform to announce a shift of "business model".

But the OP has quite the imagination. :)

Total bullshit. How do a non-profit org would make business style subscriptions ? There was already offers -from companies- trying to -buy- vlc in some way, that was always rejected, and by a far amount that your hypotetical subs would generate

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