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posted by janrinok on Thursday February 08 2018, @12:37AM   Printer-friendly
from the too-big-to-be-punished? dept.

From TorrentFreak:

VideoLAN, the team behind the VLC media player, recently revealed that they turned down several tens of millions of euros to bundle their software with advertising. The same cannot be said of third-party developers cloning VLC for profit, however. An ad-supported clone discovered on Google Play has a staggering five to ten million downloads and breaches VLC's GPL license, yet Google refuses to take it down.

[...] Aside from its incredible functionality, VLC (operated by the VideoLAN non-profit) has won the hearts of Internet users for other key reasons, not least its commitment to being free and open source software. While it's true to say that VLC doesn't cost a penny, the term 'free' actually relates to the General Public License (GPL) under which it's distributed.

[...] Since VLC is extremely popular and just about as 'free' as software can get, people get extremely defensive when they perceive that a third-party is benefiting from the software without adhering to the terms of the generous GPL license. That was the case beginning a few hours ago when veteran Reddit user MartinVanBallin pointed out a piece of software on the Google Play Store.

"They took VLC, put in ads, didn't attribute VLC or follow the open source license, and they're using Media Player Classics icon," MartinVanBallin wrote.

Update: The app is no longer on Google Play.


Original Submission

Related Stories

VLC 3.0.0 Released, With Better Hardware Decoding and Support for HDR, 360-Degree Video, Chromecast 39 comments

VideoLAN has released version 3.0.0 of the VLC media player for Windows, Linux, BSD, Android, and macOS. The new version is billed as enabling hardware decoded playback of 4K, 8K, and 360-degree video (in a demonstration video, VLC 3.0.0 is shown playing 8K 48fps 360-degree video on a Samsung Galaxy S8).

3.0.0 adds support for (not exhaustive):

Linux/BSD default video output is now OpenGL, instead of Xvideo.

The 3.0.x branch of VLC will be maintained as long-term support versions and will be the last releases on Windows XP (with significant limitations), Vista, macOS 10.7, 10.8 & 10.9, iOS 7 & 8, Android 2.x, 3.x, 4.0.x & 4.1.x, and the last to run on compilers before gcc 5.0 and clang 3.4, or equivalent.

From VLC Android developer Geoffrey Métais's blog post about the release, which discusses why Chromecast support took so long to add, as well as other missing features that have now been added to the Android version:

Chromecast support is everywhere and VLC took years to get it, right, but there are plenty of good reasons for it:

First of all, VideoLAN is a nonprofit organization and not a company. There are few developers paid for making VLC, most of them do it in their free time. That's how you get VLC for free and without any ads!

Also, VLC is 100% Open Source and Chromecast SDK isn't: We had to develop our very own Chromecast stack by ourselves. This is also why there is no voice actions for VLC (except with Android Auto), [and] we cannot use Google Play Services.

Furthermore, Chromecast is not designed to play local video files: When you watch a Youtube video, your phone is just a remote controller, nothing more. Chromecast streams the video from youtube.com. That's where it becomes complicated, Chromecast only supports very few codecs number, let's say h264. Google ensures that your video is encoded in h264 format on youtube.com, so streaming is simple. With VLC, you have media of any format. So VLC has to be a http server like youtube.com, and provide the video in a Chromecast compatible format. And of course in real time, which is challenging on Android because phones are less powerful than computers.

At last, VLC was not designed to display a video on another screen. It took time to properly redesign VLC to nicely support it. The good news is we did not make a Chromecast specific support, it is generic renderers: in the next months we can add UPnP support for example, to cast on any UPnP box or TV!

Also at The Verge and Tom's Hardware.

Related: Stable Release of VLC 1.0 for Android
VLC 2.0 for Android Released
EU Offers Cash Bounties to Improve the Security of VLC Media Player
Google Won't Take Down Pirate VLC With 5M Downloads (Update: They Have Taken it Down)


Original Submission

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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by c0lo on Thursday February 08 2018, @01:07AM

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Thursday February 08 2018, @01:07AM (#634586) Journal

    ... boooo!

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
  • (Score: 3, Funny) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday February 08 2018, @01:15AM (9 children)

    by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Thursday February 08 2018, @01:15AM (#634589) Homepage Journal

    I attempted to pass the time by trolling Soylent but was forced to make do with only the music on my iPhone when I tried to load the homepage of everyone's favorite site only to be met with "the db needs some maintenance".

    Or something like that.

    --
    Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
    • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 08 2018, @01:23AM (6 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 08 2018, @01:23AM (#634597)

      Justice will be well served when SoylentNews goes down and never comes back up.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 08 2018, @03:15AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 08 2018, @03:15AM (#634656)

        > goes down and never comes back up.

        Not everything is your dick.

      • (Score: -1) by fakefuck39 on Thursday February 08 2018, @03:53AM (4 children)

        by fakefuck39 (6620) on Thursday February 08 2018, @03:53AM (#634663)

        why the fuck would you want this site gone? all those losers in highschool that I used to stuff into a locker, who thought they were very smart but are actually just awkward and slightly autistic, and very, very ugly. they're all here. they say the dumbest shit. they can't hold a professional job. they are even more awkward now. so entertaining to read as I sit in my expensive apartment, as I sit on a plane for my monthly fun trip to europe or asia, as I bang hot girls half my age.

        there was a guy on slashdot named cdreimer. disgusting fat unsuccessful ugly loser at life. and he kept posting for some reason - some defect in his brain made him paint reality in colors that made his life awesome to him and really funny and sad to everyone normal. it was very entertaining. then he got the hint after a year and left. this place, including a couple of the admins on here, has a whole bunch of cdreimers. it's like the classic slashdot crowd from the 90's (like me) left, the millennial idiots are all over reddit, and the real nerd losers came here. not "nerd" in the good smart highly paid network professional way. the ugly fat pizzaface porn-gobbling highschool loser who is now an adult, but never grew up. he still thinks he is smart, and he was, compared to his peers in school.

        why would you want this entertainment to go away?

        • (Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday February 08 2018, @05:42AM (3 children)

          by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Thursday February 08 2018, @05:42AM (#634699) Homepage Journal

          It is my understanding that your mother doesn't charge you rent for living in her basement.

          --
          Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
          • (Score: -1) by fakefuck39 on Thursday February 08 2018, @07:10AM (2 children)

            by fakefuck39 (6620) on Thursday February 08 2018, @07:10AM (#634761)

            Of course she doesn't. Why would she since my parents live in the house I bought them. I love how antisocial losers afraid of large groups of normal people get all alpha behind a keyboard and let rip these hardcore insults. Sir, as I said in my original post, you are the reason I come to this site. Unfortunately clowns like you are scared to join any type of social event I would be attending, so all I can get is this online entertainment.

            • (Score: 2) by Geotti on Thursday February 08 2018, @10:44AM

              by Geotti (1146) on Thursday February 08 2018, @10:44AM (#634812) Journal

              Why would she since my parents live in the house I bought them.

              Because, when you took that loan from the bank to "buy" your parents a house (so you could brag about it to your internet "friends,") you miscalculated the rates and are now spending all of the pocket money you get from your 9 to 5 meat-mincer-job on them?

            • (Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday February 08 2018, @05:00PM

              by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Thursday February 08 2018, @05:00PM (#635020) Homepage Journal

              I wouldn't want to scare you away from any website that's got me in it

              --
              Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by chromas on Thursday February 08 2018, @02:07AM

      by chromas (34) Subscriber Badge on Thursday February 08 2018, @02:07AM (#634630) Journal

      IRC's always open for trolling.

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by DannyB on Thursday February 08 2018, @03:26PM

      by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Thursday February 08 2018, @03:26PM (#634952) Journal

      tried to load the homepage of everyone's favorite site only to be met with "the db needs some maintenance".

      They should be using dBm instead of dB

      It's more hipster and is NoSQL.

      --
      People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
  • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 08 2018, @01:16AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 08 2018, @01:16AM (#634590)

    We're currently dealing with unexpected but extremely necessary db maintenance.

    Shit yeah, SN went tits up!

    Fuck you fucking fuckers.

  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 08 2018, @01:22AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 08 2018, @01:22AM (#634595)

    Google loves fakes of popular apps. The fakes push more adverts to users than the original apps.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 08 2018, @01:26AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 08 2018, @01:26AM (#634599)

    Everyone should boycott Google until they stop promoting violations of the GPL.

    • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 08 2018, @01:27AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 08 2018, @01:27AM (#634603)

      Let me just sign out of my gmail account real quick.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Thursday February 08 2018, @01:39AM (3 children)

    by Thexalon (636) on Thursday February 08 2018, @01:39AM (#634608)

    "Be evil"

    --
    The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
    • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 08 2018, @11:10AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 08 2018, @11:10AM (#634818)

      It probably was a misunderstanding. Someone asked: "What is your policy for promoting good behaviour?" To which Google answered: "Don't. Do evil."

    • (Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Thursday February 08 2018, @03:28PM

      by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Thursday February 08 2018, @03:28PM (#634953) Journal

      Bill Gates famously said "We've seen Google's Motto, and we disagree with that."

      I think he meant Google's Mission Statement, not Google's Motto.

      Motto: Don't be evil.

      Mission Statement: To organize all the world's information.

      --
      People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
    • (Score: 2) by Freeman on Friday February 09 2018, @05:23PM

      by Freeman (732) on Friday February 09 2018, @05:23PM (#635587) Journal

      No, that's part of the Trade Secret memo. Can't have the general public thinking, they could possibly do something that might be construed as evil.

      --
      Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Laci on Thursday February 08 2018, @01:44AM (4 children)

    by Laci (2618) on Thursday February 08 2018, @01:44AM (#634615)

    I mean it seriously. After they refuse to act in a timely manner, they are liable for willful contributory copyright infringement. If the clone is downloaded in the US, Google may be on the hook for $150000/download.
    Google used to be the least evil of all the evil big corporations, but those days are slowly (or fast, depending on your feelings) going the way of the dodo :-(.

  • (Score: 2, Informative) by koick on Thursday February 08 2018, @01:46AM (3 children)

    by koick (5420) on Thursday February 08 2018, @01:46AM (#634617)

    By the time I saw this article yesterday both linked apps it's complaining about were already taken down. And, indeed the article at the end says it's been removed.

    • (Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday February 08 2018, @02:02AM

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Thursday February 08 2018, @02:02AM (#634627) Journal

      Thanks, edited.

      --
      [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
    • (Score: 5, Interesting) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday February 08 2018, @02:10AM (1 child)

      by PartTimeZombie (4827) on Thursday February 08 2018, @02:10AM (#634632)

      I saw either that same app or a copy of it the last time I downloaded the real VLC from Google Play and that would have been 6 months ago at least.

      I'm sure it gets removed regularly and put back, as the scumbags behind it obviously make money from it. This lowers the value of Google Play as a whole too, so Google either need to find a better way of dealing with scam type apps, or accept their users having a much lower faith in the reliability of what they download.

      • (Score: 2) by Freeman on Friday February 09 2018, @05:26PM

        by Freeman (732) on Friday February 09 2018, @05:26PM (#635589) Journal

        You actually think the Google Play store isn't a "Hive of Scum and Villainy"? Apple's Store is much better in a "I pay more for my usable apps than you" sort of way. Google Play is the Microsoft of the mobile phone market, while Apple is still Apple. Which is kind of ironic.

        --
        Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
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