23/08/2025
Not all heroes wear capes - some just refuse millions...
Jean-Baptiste Kempf, the creator of VLC Media Player, has turned down offers worth tens of millions of dollars to ensure VLC remains ad-free and freely available to users worldwide.
VLC began as a student project at École Centrale Paris in the late 1990s, and under Kempf's guidance, was released under the GNU General Public License, making its source code freely available. By 2007, VLC was struggling and the project was fading, but Kempf swooped in and turned VLC into a titan, racking up over 4 billion downloads.
Corporations have come knocking with lucrative offers, dangling the promise of millions in exchange for slapping ads across VLC's interface or locking premium features behind a paywall. Each time, Kempf has said no.
"VLC will always be free and maintained by users," Kempf said in a recent interview. His decision reflects a rare dedication to user satisfaction over monetary gain, ensuring no interruptions, no distractions, and no tracking of user data.
VLC has been downloaded over 6 billion times since its inception - an astonishing feat for a project that refuses to sell out.
In a world where everything costs something, Jean-Baptiste Kempf chose principles over profit.
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