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133 lines
5.0 KiB
XML
133 lines
5.0 KiB
XML
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
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<appendix> <title> Project history </title>
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<sect1> <title> VIA and the Network2000 project </title>
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<para>
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The whole project started back in 1995. At that time, students of the
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<ulink url="http://www.ecp.fr/"> École Centrale de Paris </ulink>
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enjoyed a TokenRing network, managed by the <ulink
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url="http://www.via.ecp.fr/"> VIA Centrale Réseaux
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association</ulink>, and were looking
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for a solution to upgrade to a modern network. So the idea behind
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Network2000 was to find a project students would realize that would
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be interesting, would require a high-quality network, and could
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provide enough fame so that sponsors would be interested.
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</para>
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<para>
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Someone came up with the idea of doing television broadcast on the
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network, so that students could watch TV in their room. This was
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interesting, mixed a lot of cool technologies, and provided fame
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because no one had written a free MPEG-2 decoder so far.
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</para>
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</sect1>
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<sect1> <title> Foundation of the VideoLAN project </title>
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<para>
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<ulink url="http://www.3com.com/"> 3Com</ulink>,
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<ulink url="http://www.bouygues.com/"> Bouygues </ulink> and
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la Société des Amis were
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interested and financed the project, which was then known after
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the name of VideoLAN.
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</para>
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<para>
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The VideoLAN team, in particular <ulink url="mailto:walken@via.ecp.fr">
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Michel Lespinasse </ulink> (current maintainer of <ulink
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url="http://www.linuxvideo.org/">LiViD</ulink>'s mpeg2dec)
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and <ulink url="mailto:hpreg@via.ecp.fr"> Régis
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Duchesne</ulink>, started writing code in 1996. By the end of 1997 they had
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a working client-server solution, but it would crash a lot and was
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hard to extend.
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</para>
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<para>
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At that time it was still closed-source and only-for-demo code.
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</para>
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</sect1>
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<sect1> <title> VLC media player design </title>
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<para>
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In 1998, <ulink url="mailto:seguin@via.ecp.fr"> Vincent Seguin</ulink>
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(structure, interface and video output),
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<ulink url="mailto:massiot@via.ecp.fr"> Christophe Massiot</ulink>
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(input and video decoder),
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<ulink url="mailto:maxx@via.ecp.fr"> Michel Kaempf</ulink>
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(audio decoder and audio output) and
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<ulink url="mailto:polux@via.ecp.fr"> Jean-Marc Dressler</ulink>
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(synchronization) decided to write a brand new player from scratch,
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called VideoLAN Client (VLC), so that it could be easily open sourced.
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Of course we based it on code written by our predecessors, but in
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an advanced structure, described in the first chapter (it hasn't been
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necessary to change it a lot).
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</para>
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<para>
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At the same time, <ulink url="mailto:benny@via.ecp.fr"> Benoît
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Steiner </ulink> started the writing of an advanced stream server, called
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VideoLAN Server (VLS).
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</para>
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<para>
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Functional test seeds have been released internally in June 1999
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(vlc-DR1) and November 1999 (vlc-DR2), and we started large scale tests
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and presentations. The French audience discovered us at Linux Expo
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in June 1999, presenting our 20 minutes of Golden Eye (which is now
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a legend among developers :-). At that time only a network input was
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possible, file input was added later, but it remained kludgy for a while.
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</para>
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<para>
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In early 2000, we (especially <ulink url="mailto:sam@via.ecp.fr"> Samuel
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Hocevar</ulink>, who is still a major contributor) started working
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on DVDs (PS files, AC3, SPU). In the summer 2000, pre-release builds
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have been seeded (0.2.0 versions), but they still lacked essential
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features.
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</para>
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<para>
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In late 2000, <ulink url="mailto:massiot@via.ecp.fr"> Christophe Massiot
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</ulink> with the support of his company,
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<ulink url="http://www.idealx.com/"> IDEALX</ulink>, rewrote major
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parts of the input to allow modularization and advanced navigation, and <ulink
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url="mailto:stef@via.ecp.fr"> Stéphane Borel </ulink> worked on a
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fully-featured DVD plug-in for VLC.
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</para>
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</sect1>
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<sect1> <title> The Opening </title>
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<para>
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For Linux Expo in February 2001, the <ulink url="http://www.gnu.org/">
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Free Software Foundation </ulink> and <ulink url="http://www.idealx.com/">
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IDEALX </ulink> wanted to make live streaming of the 2001 FSF awards
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from Paris to New York. VideoLAN was the chosen solution. Finally
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it couldn't be done live because of bandwidth considerations, but a
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<ulink url="http://www.via.ecp.fr/~massiot/encoding.html"> chain of
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fully open-source solutions </ulink> made it possible to record it.
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</para>
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<para>
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At the same time, the president of the <ulink url="http://www.ecp.fr/">
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École Centrale Paris</ulink> officially decided to place the software
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under GNU General Public Licence, thanks to <ulink
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url="mailto:henri@via.ecp.fr"> Henri Fallon</ulink>, <ulink
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url="mailto:jprey@ads.ecp.fr"> Jean-Philippe Rey</ulink>, and the IDEALX team.
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</para>
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<para>
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VideoLAN software is now one of the most popular open source DVD
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players available, and has contributors all around the world. The
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last chapter of this appendix is not written yet :-).
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</para>
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</sect1>
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</appendix>
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