VLC Media Player - free or not?
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On this forum many people said that VLC is not free. While I was searching FSF site I found this article regarding PlayOgg!
https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/playogg/en/
"Many different free software players work with Ogg. We like one called VLC Media Player."
I'm suprised because a lot of people say VLC is not a free software.
Who is right? Personally, I believe more FSF :)
"On this forum many people said that VLC is not free."
Could you link to that?
"This is a very common question, it uses privative codecs :("
https://trisquel.info/en/forum/no-vlc-repos
both VLC and mplayer are in the trisquel repo, thus it's safe to say, they are both free software.
Being in the reps means nothing. Human error, right? :P
That being said, yes, VLC is free software. However, some codecs it uses might be problematic in some parts of the world. However, that is a matter that affects ALL players. If you use free software to read patented formats, you might get trouble. Solution? Use open/free formats.
I am not sure if XVid and X264 are also troublesome, to be safe stay with FLAC, OGG, WebM, etc.
It must be different now. That thread was from five years ago.
VLC is completely free software. It uses patent-encumbered (but free) codecs, which are needed to play patent-encumbered formats. There are companies such as MPEG LA which collect patents. These are called patent trolls, and are very harmful to free software developers.
If you are making your own videos, please use a patent-unencumbered format such as ogg or webm. See http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/playogg/en/ for more information.
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