corporate use of VLC

[dotzy]

hello,

we're planning to use either vlc or mplayer for corporate use (>1000 users) mainly on vista 32-bit and redhat enterprise 5
i have some questions that i cannot answer even after 1 1/2 day going through wiki, docs and everything i could find

1. do we get any legal issues if we deploy vlc (because we tend to use him) WITHOUT the real media codec pack? wmv shouldn't be a problem because we have the license with windows anyway, quicktime doesn't bother us. the way i understand it, this should be okay, because we don't want to encode files, simply play as many formats as possible without having to roll out any additional packs

2. RedHat enterprise Linux: (i'm a linux noob) the easiest way would be to download the vlc-0.8.6d-2.el5.rf.i386.rpm and install it or download the Latest RPM x86 packages tarballs for Red Hat 9.0 (v5) or the fedora cores and try those, right?

thanks in advance
dotzy

[dotzy]

bump
please, i need an answer from the vlc team,
thank you very much

[MadlyMad]

Hi

VLC is a freeware so you can use it without worry, but it cannot decode Real formats (until ffdshow reach to decode them IIRC)

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

There are no usages limitations in the license (which is to say, the local legislation is the only limiting factor).

[dotzy]

hi,
thank you very much j-b and all the others for the answers!
looks like we will finally kill windows media player EVERYWHERE end of Q1 2009

[Cathympps]

I know this is an old thread, but I hope someone here can advise me. I work for a government school in Australia. Now I've been told that I can't put VLC onto my school owned laptop because it's not personal use. I thought I could. I've also been told that the codecs used in VLC are not ok for corporate use even if VLC is. Can anyone explain that to me. I would really like to use it, but I can only do so if it's legal.

Thanks for any help.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Cathympps: someone has been lying to you.
THERE IS NO restriction on VLC usage. NOT ANY. Personal use or not.

About the codecs, noone really know the answer, since it hasn't been challenged by any court. VLC is not more illegal than all the codecs packs...

[Cathympps]

Thanks J-B, that's good to know.

Who is in control of the licences for the codecs that are used? Do they change? Is there any way that I could check that?

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Who is in control of the licences for the codecs that are used? Do they change? Is there any way that I could check that?

It depends on the codec and the country. No general rule.

[Cathympps]

OK. Thanks for your help.