VLC remains awesome because the guy (maybe Jean-Baptiste Kempf?) that controls the project has refused to be bought, has in fact refused HUGE sums of money.
The original author of any project has to right to sell it with the corresponding licence changes at any time.
There’s some legal grey area on something like Linux or VLC which have MANY MANY developer hands in the pie, and existing users could certainly fork off the existing releases, but VLC could pivot tomorrow to a for profit company and make future releases of the official VLC a paid product, if they choose too.
FOSS is enshitification-hardened, not proof.
VLC remains awesome because the guy (maybe Jean-Baptiste Kempf?) that controls the project has refused to be bought, has in fact refused HUGE sums of money.
The original author of any project has to right to sell it with the corresponding licence changes at any time.
There’s some legal grey area on something like Linux or VLC which have MANY MANY developer hands in the pie, and existing users could certainly fork off the existing releases, but VLC could pivot tomorrow to a for profit company and make future releases of the official VLC a paid product, if they choose too.