VideoLAN is a project that develops software for playing video and other media formats across a local area network (LAN). It originally developed two programs for media streaming, VideoLAN Client (VLC) and VideoLAN Server (VLS), but most of the features of VLS have been incorporated into VLC, with the result renamed VLC media player.
The project began as a student endeavor at École Centrale Paris (France), but after releasing the software under the free software/open source GNU General Public License, the project is now multinational with a development team spanning 20 nations.