If you don't know what app will open a random media file (or URL), VLC is the answer. It runs on everything, plays anything, and it's free – thanks to Jean-Baptiste Kempf.

Kempf is the chap who keeps VLC going and he [1]blogged earlier this week that the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) [2]gave him the European SFS Award 2025 . The award was handed over at the [3]South Tyrol Free Software Conference , or SFS Con, held in Bolzano, Italy, last week.

[4]

The FSFE's Matthias Kirschner hands the SFS Award to Jean-Baptiste Kempf. Credit: NOI Techpark – Marco Parisi CC-BY-SA 4.0

Kempf is a quiet sort of hero. As [5]he told The Register back in 2011 , he's turned down any changes to VLC's funding model:

So far, nothing was done [with VCs], because if we ever do something, we need to find a business model that actually adds value for the users. Most business models we've been proposed were linked to shipping toolbars and other crapware while installing VLC. This is not interesting for us.

Or, as other sites put it, he is [6]the one who kept VLC free – because, had he sold out and let the app run advertising or worse, he could likely have become seriously wealthy.

VLC [7]started out in 1996 as a student project at ECP – École Centrale Paris (now merged into [8]CentraleSupélec ). Libération has some of the [9]early history . This includes some gems: [10]French telco Bouygues offered to sponsor faster site-to-site links, if the students worked out a way to stream Télévision Française 1 over them. The students, predictably, also wanted to play Doom over the new links. The only MPEG2 file they had for early testing was a 20-minute clip of the James Bond film GoldenEye, which is why that was the code name of VLC 1.0.x. (GoldenEye, incidentally, isn't a James Bond story. It's the name of Ian Fleming's [11]villa in Jamaica .)

Initially, VLC was only part of a larger project, a client for playing back MPEG2 streams from a separate server, called the [12]VideoLAN Server . So there were two parts: VLS and VLC, the VideoLAN Client.

[13]Mozilla's Firefox 145 is heeeeeere: Buffs up privacy, bloats AI

[14]Ironclad OS project popping out Unix-like kernel in a unique mix of languages

[15]De-duplicating the desktops: Let's come together, right now

[16]52-year-old data tape could contain only known copy of UNIX V4

VLC is now a recursive acronym, [17]officially short for "VLC Media Player." The player long ago absorbed most of the functionality of its now-deprecated server counterpart and can [18]stream on its own – which makes its modern name a little misleading, since it's not just a player anymore.

Kempf did not write VLC himself. Indeed, the project's impressive [19]list of developers includes well over 1,000 names. He went to ECP in 2003, joined the VLC project, and when it looked like it might collapse in 2006 when the development team graduated, he [20]took over running the project – and has been doing so ever since. In 2012, he set up [21]Videolabs to support its continued development.

[22]

VLC's icon, a traffic cone – which the program automatically festoons with decorations during the holiday season – is a nod to the ECP student association VIA, and its [23]fondness for collecting street furniture while inebriated. This, incidentally, is according to Jon Lech Johansen, or as [24]The Reg called him 23 years ago, "DVD Jon." Another footnote we appreciate is that [25]version codenames are taken from Sir Terry Pratchett's Discworld. Apart, that is, from version 2.2.1, which appeared in April 2015 – [26]just after the great man died . It was simply called… Terry Pratchett. ®

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[1] https://jbkempf.com/blog/2025/European_SFS_Award_2025/

[2] https://fsfe.org/news/2025/news-20251107-01.html

[3] https://www.sfscon.it/

[4] https://regmedia.co.uk/2025/11/12/kempf-sfs-award.jpg

[5] https://www.theregister.com/2011/02/16/funds_or_fun/

[6] https://www.welcometothejungle.com/en/articles/kempf-interview-vlc-videolan

[7] https://wiki.videolan.org/VideoLAN/

[8] https://www.centralesupelec.fr/en/strategy

[9] https://www.liberation.fr/economie/economie-numerique/vlc-le-cone-rebelle-du-lecteur-multimedia-a-fete-ses-20-ans-20210207_Q55VLWYSR5GRXPQNR56LQC43DA/

[10] https://search.theregister.com/?q=bouygues

[11] https://www.theflemingvilla.com/

[12] https://wiki.videolan.org/VLS/

[13] https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/12/firefox_145_arrives/

[14] https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/10/ironclad_os_unix_like_kernel/

[15] https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/10/deduplicating_the_desktops/

[16] https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/07/unix_fourth_edition_tape_rediscovered/

[17] https://jbkempf.com/blog/VLC-Name/

[18] https://www.videolan.org/vlc/streaming.html

[19] https://www.videolan.org/videolan/team/

[20] https://www.lepoint.fr/high-tech-internet/jean-baptiste-kempf-vlc-la-success-story-d-un-entrepreneur-francais-23-10-2017-2166586_47.php

[21] https://videolabs.io/about/

[22] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aRS9IyQViTQoRAj5W4WVYAAAAEI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0

[23] https://web.archive.org/web/20220331124436/http://nanocrew.net/2005/06/23/vlc-cone/

[24] https://www.theregister.com/2003/01/07/dvd_jon_is_free_official/

[25] https://jbkempf.com/blog/On-the-road-to-VLC-1.1.0-introduction/

[26] https://www.theregister.com/2015/03/12/sir_terry_pratchett_gets_to_meet_death_at_the_age_of_66/

[27] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/