15 years of VLC and VideoLAN
A little know fact about the VideoLAN project is that it was started so that the student organization could justify the need to replace the old networking infrastructure of the campus with a brand new high-bandwidth fiber optics network. They really wanted to deploy a fiber optic network but the school would have never approved it so they thought "OK, we need something that uses a ton of bandwidth, let's make a video streaming app".<p>They proceeded to start the VideoLAN project, with the VideoLAN Client (VLC) and VideoLAN server, and streamed movies and public television channels to the whole campus.<p>Interesting how it came to benefit everybody.<p>Source: I studied there and had a chat with one of the original creators of the project once.