{"id":42890,"date":"2024-04-19T16:09:27","date_gmt":"2024-04-19T20:09:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=42890"},"modified":"2024-10-17T14:49:23","modified_gmt":"2024-10-17T18:49:23","slug":"vlc-vs-the-app-stores","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2024\/04\/19\/vlc-vs-the-app-stores\/","title":{"rendered":"VLC vs. the App Stores"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/videolan\/status\/1771104206872555660\">VideoLAN<\/a> (via <a href=\"https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=39798565\">Hacker News<\/a>):<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/videolan\/status\/1771104206872555660\"><p>App Stores were a mistake.<\/p><p>Currently, we cannot update VLC on Windows Store, and we cannot update VLC on Android Play Store, without reducing security or dropping a lot of users&#8230;<\/p><p>For now, iOS App Store still allows us to ship for iOS9, but until when?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/videolan\/status\/1759688788232523788\">VideoLAN<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/videolan\/status\/1759688788232523788\"><p>If you do wonder why we don&rsquo;t update VLC on the Windows Store or why VLC\/iOS can&rsquo;t connect properly to OneDrive shares, it&rsquo;s because Microsoft Kafka&iuml;esque bureaucracy refuses to help us.<\/p><p>We&rsquo;re only trying to contact someone since 2years&#8230;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/videolan\/status\/1771102415279763909\">VideoLAN<\/a> (<a href=\"https:\/\/social.treehouse.systems\/@Aissen\/112139649840297169\">Anisse<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=39827828\">Hacker News<\/a>):<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/videolan\/status\/1771102415279763909\"><p>If you wonder why we can&rsquo;t update the VLC on Android version, it&rsquo;s because Google refuses to let us update:<\/p><ul><li>either we give them our private signing keys,<\/li><li>or we drop support for Android TV before API-30, and all our users on TV API&lt;30 can&rsquo;t get fixes.<\/li><\/ul><\/blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/videolan\/status\/1771123709366943875\">VideoLAN<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/videolan\/status\/1771123709366943875\">\n<p>VLC cannot even enter the Mac App Store, because of the restrictions&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p>Look at all those platforms competing to benefit users.<\/p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Florian4Gamers\/status\/1778742764567429366\">Florian Mueller<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Florian4Gamers\/status\/1778742764567429366\"><p>This here is a European app store for Android and Google&rsquo;s <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/luishg\/status\/1778717325652341075\">YouTube has just killed their channel<\/a>. It&rsquo;s obviously a problem if you depend on the incumbent&rsquo;s platforms all the way.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n<p>Previously:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2024\/03\/21\/u-s-sues-apple-over-iphone-monopoly\/\">U.S. Sues Apple Over iPhone Monopoly<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2021\/07\/01\/google-sunsets-the-apk-format-for-new-android-apps\/\">Google Sunsets the APK Format for New Android Apps<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n<p id=\"vlc-vs-the-app-stores-update-2024-04-26\">Update (2024-04-26): <a href=\"https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=40100505\">President of VideoLAN<\/a> (<a href=\"https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=40098867\">Hacker<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=39827828\">News<\/a>):<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=40100505\">\n<p>On Android, we can either give Google our private (!) key or not support existing Android versions, and there is (as usual for Google) no one to discuss this with.<\/p>\n<p>On Windows, they changed soo many times the backend of their store, that even with support from the top of the hierarchy, we cannot even update our desktop apps (change a URL, not even a binary&#8230;)<\/p>\n<p>Apple, so far, is less annoying, but to support old versions (iOS9 or 10) is an always on battle.<\/p>\n<p>Apple AppStores does not allow GPL, Microsoft does not allow GPLv3 and Unity does not even allow LGPL&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>It&rsquo;s very frustrating and time consuming, but because we don&rsquo;t make money out of those, and we are on more platforms than anyone, we can complain publically&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p id=\"vlc-vs-the-app-stores-update-2024-10-17\">Update (2024-10-17): <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/TimSweeneyEpic\/status\/1846679473317728299\">Tim Sweeney<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/x.com\/TimSweeneyEpic\/status\/1846679473317728299\">\n<p>Nobody has yet figured out Google&rsquo;s motive for totally breaking the integrity of Android&rsquo;s digital signing infrastructure by demanding developers hand over their private signing keys to Google. This never made any sense.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>VideoLAN (via Hacker News): App Stores were a mistake.Currently, we cannot update VLC on Windows Store, and we cannot update VLC on Android Play Store, without reducing security or dropping a lot of users&#8230;For now, iOS App Store still allows us to ship for iOS9, but until when? VideoLAN: If you do wonder why we [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2024-04-19T20:09:30Z","apple_news_api_id":"bf652c55-a6ce-4ab0-abc1-e18ab4b83c78","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2024-10-17T18:49:26Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAQ==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/Av2UsVabOSrCrweGKtLg8eA","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[248,91,784,31,2321,1137,32,39,2385,836,1227,218,864,555],"class_list":["post-42890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-android","tag-appstore","tag-google-play-store","tag-ios","tag-ios-17","tag-ios-9","tag-macapp","tag-macappstore","tag-macos-14-sonoma","tag-onedrive","tag-top-posts","tag-vlc","tag-windows-store","tag-youtube"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42890"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42890\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45402,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42890\/revisions\/45402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}