Two intelligence agencies tried to ask us to put a backdoor in VLC. We said no — we would shut it down rather than compromise our software.

1:40of handwritten assembly. No, no, no, you're doing it wrong. The compiler can do this. The intelligence agencies tried to, like, say, "Can you put a backdoor in VLC?" - Yes. Two of them. - Well, what did you say? - No. Well, I was a lot less polite. - Basically saying, "Hell no." - Like, if we had to compromise our software, we would shut it down. This is clear.

2:00- Any tweets Kieran, you regret? - Tweets I regret? - Or is it like that, how does the French song go? Regret nothing. - Don't regret anything. No, it's because regrets are attacks on your mind. - The following is a conversation all about FFmpeg and VLC with Jean-Baptiste Kempf and Kieran Kunhya. FFmpeg is an open source software system that is the invisible backbone behind YouTube, Netflix, Chrome,

2:33VLC, Discord, and basically every platform that touches video or audio on the internet. It can decode, encode, transcode, stream, and play almost any video or audio format ever created. To me, it is one of the most incredible software systems ever developed, and it's all done by volunteers. VLC is also a legendary piece of software. It is an open source media player that plays basically anything you throw at

3:07it, any format, any platform, no ads, no tracking. It has been downloaded over six billion times, and again, for me, it has been one of my favorite pieces of software ever, with the most legendary logo, which I, of course, had to honor in this conversation by wearing the VLC traffic cone hat the whole time. So again, above all else, thank you to the incredible volunteer engineers who put their heart and soul into this code that has been

3:39used and loved by billions of people. Thank you. And about the two great engineers and human beings I'm talking to in this episode, Jean-Baptiste is the president of VideoLAN and is a key figure behind VLC and FFmpeg. Kieran is a longtime codec engineer, FFmpeg contributor, and the man behind the now infamous FFmpeg account on Twitter/X that I recommend everybody follow for the memes and for the unapologetic celebration of open source and great low-level software engineering.