What Jean-Baptiste Kempf has said about Open source maintainer burnout
1 quote · 1 episode · May 6, 2026
Jean-Baptiste Kempf, French software engineer, president of VideoLAN and lead developer of VLC media player, has been quoted on Open source maintainer burnout once in 1 episode of Lex Fridman Podcast, most recently on May 6, 2026. Each quote below is verbatim and links to the moment it was said.
In their words
Kempf said he received a death threat containing powder after deciding to stop maintaining VLC's PowerPC port around 2009-2010.
“So I received a death threat with some powder in it, right?”
Lex Fridman Podcast: #496 – FFmpeg: The Incredible Technology Behind Video on the Internet (May 6, 2026) · Listen from 2:50:24
Episodes
#496 – FFmpeg: The Incredible Technology Behind Video on the InternetLex Fridman Podcast · May 6, 2026 · 4 h 24 min
Jean-Baptiste Kempf and Kieran Kunhya explain FFmpeg, VLC, video codecs, handwritten assembly, open-source maintainer burnout and the Google security drama with Lex Fridman.
Others on Open source maintainer burnout
- Kieran Kunhya · 1 quote
Jean-Baptiste Kempf on other topics
- FFmpeg · 3 quotes
- VLC media player · 3 quotes
- Video patents and patent pools · 1 quote
- Kyber (low-latency streaming SDK) · 1 quote
- Rust (programming language) · 1 quote
- AV1 · 1 quote
- dav1d · 1 quote
- VideoLAN · 1 quote