Fun story: originally, this whole construction cone thing was a student joke. VLC has been developed at a French university, which was under construction when the software was created. The students - possibly cheered up by a few drinks - had fun with some construction cones and ended up choosing it as their emblem.
VLC is open source. The moment the author invites sponsors, more new forks happen. Moreover, the claim of ‘tens of million’ is likely an accumulated number. The author has but one chance to sell the software, so there wasn’t that much money at the first place.
On the forks aspect, FOSS culture hasn’t quite got things abstracted enough here. Yes, forks would happen but a lot of value would be destroyed in a sale of the upstream. Our goal should be to make it totally pointless and that’s usually best done with copyleft and many copyright holders. Apt sources could also be more fluid and reputation aware about which repo they distribute from.
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Cool hat
Absolute Gigachad
VLC was and is one of the must have apps or me
Ah, so he based the logo off his favourite hat, I always wondered about that…
Fun story: originally, this whole construction cone thing was a student joke. VLC has been developed at a French university, which was under construction when the software was created. The students - possibly cheered up by a few drinks - had fun with some construction cones and ended up choosing it as their emblem.
Remainder that you can donate to VLC
VLC is open source. The moment the author invites sponsors, more new forks happen. Moreover, the claim of ‘tens of million’ is likely an accumulated number. The author has but one chance to sell the software, so there wasn’t that much money at the first place.
But after all, thanks for all the effort.
On the forks aspect, FOSS culture hasn’t quite got things abstracted enough here. Yes, forks would happen but a lot of value would be destroyed in a sale of the upstream. Our goal should be to make it totally pointless and that’s usually best done with copyleft and many copyright holders. Apt sources could also be more fluid and reputation aware about which repo they distribute from.
When you value change over personal gain.