Maybe because VLC is actually useful

Unlike Microslop Outlook, there's a program that doesn't break when you lose internet connection.

Years ago I when I wrote software for a living, I had an argument with a colleague, and I tried to explain to him:

The "supported" closed-source library he wanted to use was pretty popular because it was marketed by a huge company with a marketing department, or because it had a first-mover advantage, or because there were training events and books built around it, etc.

The unsupported free open-source library I wanted to use was the most popular library of its kind in the whole world. And it got to that position without any of those advantages.

What does that suggest about their relative usefulness? The world of open source is closer to being a real meritocracy. The number one app or library is probably number one for non-structural reasons.

I pulled this off reddit. I know that's gross, but this was too good not to share.

It is the year 2,002,026.

Humanity has conquered capitalism and moved off of Earth. Disease and accidental death have been eradicated. We've invented marvelous and miraculous technologies and used them to catapult ourselves to distant worlds.

It's an open question whether or not our descendants can rightly call themselves "human" anymore, and indeed some on far-flung planets do not.

On the planet Seffi, which we call Kepler-725c, one of those human descendants watches the end of a two-dimensional audiovisual narrative, a recent fad on the planet. They aren't watching it on a computer, per se, but on a holographic mesh device operating across a distributed cluster of nanomachines. The human descendant telepathically interfaced with it to launch the application and the narrative, and now xe marvels at how immersive and compelling the narrative was, despite being contained as it was within a two-dimensional non-interactive form.

A list of people who contributed to the construction of the narrative concludes its display, and the holomesh reverts to a waiting state, displaying a simple black panel within a white frame. And within that black panel, a small, orange-and-white triangle sits, perfectly centered. The human descendant doesn't know what it originally represented, and muses briefly about it before deactivating the holomesh and walking out of xeir home to enjoy the sunset beneath the purple-blue trees.

Gotta feel cool to have your software support the people doing the "real" work.

What porn did they take with them?

And in contrast to other pieces of software, it seems to be working.

Somehow I feel more "represented" by VLC than I do by any of the astronauts.

.....do you think they paid for winRAR tho??

Incredibly cool. Though I would have personally preferred MPV

I remember once I had to work in a very sophisticated and expensive electrical gear that had fixed internal thermographic cameras. The first thing that popped in the HMI were the VLC cones.