The open source VLC Media Player finally reached version 1.0 on Tuesday. The new version, codenamed Goldeneye, represents over a decade of development. The program offers support for playing practically every kind of video content in existence and has an exhaustive feature set that includes many advanced capabilities.
The software first emerged as an academic project called VideoLAN in 1996, which was created by a group of students at Ecole Centrale Paris. They aimed to build client and server components for deploying streaming video over a network. The source code was relicensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL) in 2001, opening the door for third-party participation in the development effort. VLC has attracted a tremendous community of contributors who continue to advance the program and add new features.
