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Comment by jbk | Hacker News Reader

As the one running this KickStarter, (and also main VLC dev + VideoLAN president) I have to say that I am happy.

Running a fundraiser through KickStarter for an Free and Open Source software that was always 100% developed by volunteers was a risky bet, and we were unsure... The good thing is that our community accepted that quite well and enough users understood the need and funded it.

If you wonder why we need money for VLC on WinRT, you can read here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4902508

And now, back to work, we got something to deliver :)

PS: before you ask for iOS, you might have a surprise soon.

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Great job. As I've told most of my family and friends to stay off the desktop, except for Office, having a metro VLC will be a great addition.

Yes, this is exactly why we are doing it :)

I just find it hard to understand why should so much money, time and energy should be spent on making Metro version of VLC considering it might be only useful on one niche product.

Er, yes. Windows 8 and Windows RT are very niche products, aren't they, with install bases in the millions...

Yeah, it will start approach desktop linux share now...

</trolling>

Seriously, I'm one of those who bought Windows 8 upgrade. Does not mean I'm using it, after two hours of cursing, Windows 7 was back.

I see this argument over and over, and I can't imagine why someone would go back to Win 7, even if all you use is the desktop.

I also bought Windows 8. After a few hours getting used to it, I'm happy with it.

You must be some kind of computing god! No mere moral could ever understand Windows 8!

</sarcasm> (not directed at you)

The desktop environment is the same though.

It's even better... Windows Explorer has a saner user interface, for example.

(Say what you want about Ribbon in Office, it's worked well for the built-in Windows apps)

If you read it, and apply a bit of thinking, you should see that it isn't just about "having a metro version of VLC". It's a huge codebase update, and as they also mention, this work will be applicable to other open-source applications looking to run on Metro and/or ARM.

I find it a little contradictory to call an application open-source and then its developer spend huge resources beautifying an-already-awesome-software for a proprietary operating system.

Ah yes, because what distinguishes open-source from not-open-source is how much effort is spent on the interface. Every true open-source aficionado understands that interface is the least important part of software (this is why Linux will win the desktop)

>PS: before you ask for iOS, you might have a surprise soon.

Have you guys figured out a dual license scheme for the core?

That's great news!

>before you ask for iOS, you might have a surprise soon.

Xamarin...?

I hope you'll take the Android version out of beta soon as well. I haven't gotten a chance to test it yet because I have an ARMv6 phone, but to be honest I think you should save yourselves the trouble and completely skip this architecture, and just support ARMv7 and ARMv8 chips with NEON. Pretty sure the manufacturers will stop supporting ARMv6 for low-end devices next year, too, in favor of Cortex A7. Even Google doesn't make Chrome for ARMv6.

Also, if you want to have the best media player on Android, MX Player is the one to beat, in both performance and features.

VLC for ARMv6 exists already :) It is just not on the store :)

MX is the best for now, but if Android VLC could get desktop parity, with streaming, encoding, etc all in one package, it would kick butt.

I have vlc on my Android tablet, but it doesn't utilize hdmi out to tv properly. I think most other media programs will take exclusive control of an hdmi attached screen if they are set into fullscreen, vlc as of the most recent beta I was running didn't.

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