Facts.u

The VideoLan project was originally started as an academic project in 1996. VLC used to stand for "VideoLAN Client" when VLC was a client of the VideoLAN project. But since VLC is no longer merely a client, that initialism no longer applies.

It was intended to consist of a client and server to stream videos across a campus network. Originally developed by students at the École Centrale Paris, it is now developed by contributors worldwide and is coordinated by VideoLAN, a non-profit organization.

Rewritten from scratch in 1998, it was released under GNU General Public License on 1 February 2001, with authorization from the headmaster of the École Centrale Paris. The functionality of the server program, VideoLan Server (VLS), has mostly been subsumed into VLC and has been deprecated. The project name has been changed to VLC media player because there is no longer a client/server infrastructure.

The cone icon used in VLC is a reference to the traffic cones collected by École Centrale's Networking Students' Association. The cone icon design was changed from a hand drawn low resolution icon to a higher resolution CGI-rendered version in 2006, illustrated by Richard Øiestad.