Codec Licensing

[danb21t]

Hi,
I currently work in a school in the UK. For years I have used VLC Player to overcome the lack of video format support straight out of the Windows box.

Recently we were taken over by a outside agency to support our network infrastructure. They have since told me that they are not prepared to install VLC Player site wide due to not knowing the status of the licenses of all the codecs used.
They fear that not all the codecs are legitimately free and we could be prosecuted.

Personally I hate this, and if a piece of software betters the education in this establishment I will try and use it to benefit our learners.

Any information is gratefully received.

Regards,
Dan

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

The VLC is licensed under the GPL.

SInce the source code is visible for every one to see, I am quite sure the VideoLAN project would already have been prosecuted if there was infringing/stolen material in that source code. As such, it is much less likely that VLC would include infringing material than for proprietary media players thanks to our transparency.