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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."
I'm not going to contribute. Not because I don't like VLC, I do. But because I don't support windows 8.
I'm a long time user of VLC. I use it on windows 8 currently. I don't want to see a metro version because metro apps are full screen only, and that's not for me. The regular VLC works just fine in win8 so basically they're raising money to more or less create a VLC skin...
On the other hand it could end up being the first metro app that's worth a flip. Every one I've tried so far has serious technical problems (for example Netflix and Skype).
As an aside, it's worth noting that even MS doesn't take metro seriously when it comes to actually selling applications. Office 2013 apps are desktop mode. Visio 2013 is desktop mode. Visual Studio 2012 is desktop mode. See a pattern here?
1) Fix VLC first. There are still a lot of outstanding issues and I encounter DVD's every day that PowerDVD will play but VLC will just crash on. Usually, literally, in the first moments. We're not talking obscure movies, either, but current new DVD releases.
I remember an almighty-long wait for VLC to put back in functionality to ignore keyboard hotkeys after committing code that made pressing the volume button on your computer adjust both system volume and VLC volume and it was possible to get to a state where it was impossible to unmute both. The unofficial patch that circulated took forever to make its way into the client stables.
I also get a lot of random crashes and hangs when viewing content that, after killing the process, will work fine. I also have found it almost impossible to stream things properly without having to know a myriad technical details about what I'm streaming from / to, a large part of which VLC could automate for me. I spent an hour yesterday figuring out the command-line (yep, I gave up on the GUI quite quickly after several tests resulted in nothing) to stream my desktop (via VLC's built-in "screen" source) and local Stereo Mix audio to a network-accessible stream to a VLC player on a remote machine. I gave up in the end and did things another way.
Don't get me started on things like DVD navigation (easy to "go in circles" on a lot of DVD menus), obscure formats that still error, playlist management, etc. Do I hate VLC? No, it's the only media player I install and one of the first things I do on any fresh machine, and I often give people Portable VLC for when they just want to play an obscure video file once (e.g. CCTV recordings, etc.). Which makes it even MORE annoying that these things are still present.
2) VLC works on Windows 8. What you mean is "Metro", and nobody cares about that.
3) The delivery promises are rubbish. I wouldn't touch it even if it was something I wanted - they don't even know if the license is compatible, the toolchain can exist, the app would ever be accepted, the API's exposed are enough, or whether the performance wouldn't suffer atrociously - but the kickstarter doesn't mean you'll get your money back if they can't.
You could pay a fortune, still not see any app, and not see any money back. (Some would say that's par-for-the-course on Kickstarter, but if you use your brain and support only those people who make particular promises and are likely to deliver on them, it's no worse than doing the same anywhere else).
Sorry, I'd rather donate GBP20 to VLC itself and get some of my bugbears fixed, thanks. Still can't quite believe that I can pretty reliably crash the client just by turning on certain visualisations when I get *ZERO* problems in any other program, media-player, game or anything else.
Apples DRM restricts a single purchase of an application to 5 devices, so while the source was available, Rémi Denis-Courmont felt that the distribution restrictions were not compatible with GPL, and Apple did not feel like fighting him on it.
I am a little skeptical of the claim since, at it's heart, the GPL is about releasing source back to the community, not about how the final binary is distributed. There was also an argument (not sure if it was in the copyright complaint) that iOS did not allow users to change the version they had installed, so they couldn't grab the source, recompile, and update their version.. but that is an old battle line with GPL and embedded devices.... which is probably beyond the scope of this discussion (and would probably result in a flame war between consumers and developers)
I would totally buy a "Clippy is my co-pilot" shirt to wear ironically. Preferably one that had a picture of Clippy piloting a plane into a cliff. ... Dang it, now I really want that shirt. I'm sad that it doesn't seem to actually exist.