… thus prompting the question of If VLC can ship a free DVD player, why can’t Microsoft? over on ZDNet.
“Microsoft says the cost of DVD playback adds up to several dollars,” the argument goes. “But I can download the VLC player for Windows and get DVD playback for free. How come VLC can do it and Microsoft can’t?” Welcome to the wonderful world of software licensing, where today we get to see a real-world example of the differences between commercial software and free software published under an open source license.
A good look at the why’s, and yet the answer still infuriates me. If you really care about Microsoft justifying this stupid decision, you can read their (lengthy and mostly unreadable) [FAQ response] (http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/05/04/q-amp-a-dvd-playback-and-windows-media-center-in-windows-8.aspx).
As a side note, both MacOS and Linux come with DVD playing software installed by default.