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This is unfortunate, sorry you had to go through that.

The article made a claim that VLC is owned by a Chinese entity. That surprised me because I thought VideoLAN was and is French. Is that the case?



> That surprised me because I thought VideoLAN was and is French.

It is a French non-profit whose address is my parents place :)


Reading this made my day. Thank you, from my heart, for this software - it is precious to me.

I have relied on it since 2002 as my everyday media player on every device I have ever built. I have evangelized whenever and wherever I can.


I know it's kind of funny to ask this, but have your parents received any weird legal mail from the Indian government that might be about the block?


lol. I actually checked with them :)


A fun conversation to imagine. "How's your health? The family? Have you gotten any mail about my project being a Chinese cyber weapon? No? Well, that's confusing."


Clearly VideoLAN isn’t trying hard enough!

/s, in jest, in case that isn’t clear haha


When the project got this large, I'd say it's safer to use an actual business address before too late than a private one as any weird people may target your parents' house for no good reason.


Wayyy tooo late for that.


Not sure if your parents even feel comfortable?

It's never too late than never?


No one cares :)


This is just awesome to hear. I have been using VLC since I was a kid. Love your work.


I greatly appreciate the resource you've built for everyone. Thank you!


Thanks for all of your hard work and for not selling out. I love you folks.


Thanks for all your efforts. VLC rocks. Period.


Maybe they corrected it, but for me it says the opposite.

> Notably, VLC Media Player is not backed by a Chinese company. It is developed by VideoLAN, a Paris-based firm.


The article basically states that the reason the government banned it was because Chinese actors were using VideoLAN products (VLC) to deploy malware loaders onto citizens' devices.

I don't understand why they banned videolan.org though. It's a French website, and I'd assume the Chinese actors were bundling malware when VLC was installed from another website and not videolan.org.

Videolan.org is EXACTLY where VLC should be downloaded from to ensure the software you download is malware free - ironically, I'd expect banning the VLC website to increase VLC downloads from alternative sources, and thus increasing the possibility of the user downloading malware.


It says

> The reason behind blocking these apps is that the government feared these platforms were sending user data to China

Maybe they have some CDN or some service in China?


None whatsoever.


> It is developed by VideoLAN, a Paris-based firm.

Non-profit, not firm.


you work and ethics have been an inspiration to many


https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=jbk "JBK VLC" (search) ... French.




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