VLC Running Kickstarter Campaign To Fund Native Windows 8 App

New submitter aaron44126 writes "Some VLC developers have launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund the development of a native port of VLC as a Windows 8 app. The goal is to create an app with a UI that fits into the rest of the Windows 8 ecosystem that supports the playback of all of the types of files that VLC already supports. Playback of optical media (DVD/VCD/BD) is also on the list. They hope to use as much existing code as possible while doing whatever necessary to get VLC running in the 'Metro' environment and meet Microsoft's requirements for distribution through the Windows Store. Porting to ARM so that it can run on Windows RT devices will happen after the Windows 8 app is complete. The campaign has actually been going on for almost two weeks but they published their first update yesterday, in which they announced their intent to produce a Windows Phone 8 port as well."

Comments

Re:Win 8

[game kid]

All VLC donators should withhold their money until VLC's devs can prove they no longer wish to legitimize Windows 8's closed "ecosystem" and radically wrong "Modern" UI. They should wait until the devs can agree to skip this version (and instead improve support and integration with earlier Windowses as needed until 9 arrives). Even one dollar will convince MS that people think 8 is some "necessary evil" and keep them from immediately apologizing for that dreck.

It's one thing to, say, force programs (by default UAC settings) to save docs and settings away from the Program Files folders (which should've been the norm anyway), as Vista and 7 do; it's another to drop the Start button to make people want to buy a whole new computer with an inherently less-precise touch interface, or ban freely-developed programs outright (on Windows RT, at least) to force programmers to pay for admission to the API and app store. There are other (larger?) problems, but those alone require us to send a friendly reminder that developers (developers developers...) within and without MS made prior Windowses usable in the first place, and that we have not authorized career marketers to fuck up what could've been a decent OS.