With our partner Salesforce, unify sales, marketing and customer service. Accele your growth!
In this new edition of the Frenchweb club, we receive Jean-Baptiste Kempf, an essential figure in free software, president of VLC and for 1 year CTO de Scaleway. The opportunity to come back to the incredible VLC adventure, “the most used French software in the world and the least profitable” in its own words. It is in the light of this experience that he shares his analysis of the open source models for us.
A few days before the summit of action for AI, we will without concession the French technological position without concession. If he recognizes that “No French or European actor has yet reached the scale of a hyperscaler “,” It is absurd that companies like EDF sign contracts of several hundred millions with AWS. This lack of economic patriotism weakens our digital independence. »»
Find the entire interview on Frenchweb.fr
VLC: a worldwide success without business model
VLC displays more than 8 billion downloads. Originally developed by students from Centrale Paris, this open source multimedia player has gained popularity thanks to its compatibility with all video formats.
“VLC is the most used French software in the world and the least profitable,” says Kempf. The Videolan association, which is carrying out the project, only works with donations and community contributions.
Open source, growth and innovation lever
If open source is often perceived as a model without financial perspective, it can however generate important opportunities for indirect business.
“The time when the sale of licenses was the main source of software income is over,” explains Jean Baptiste Kempf. Today, open source is based on various economic models: support, integration, SaaS or cloud infrastructure. Companies like Red Hat, Odoo or Sentry have made it a major growth lever.
The development of AI also gives open source to the center of technological strategies. “Public decision-makers associate open source and AI, which benefits the ecosystem,” he said.
Scaleway: a European cloud against American giants
CTO De Scaleway, Jean Baptiste Kempf aims to create a real European cloud capable of competing with AWS and Google Cloud. SCALEWAY is focusing on technological innovation and certification. “We have doubled our engineering staff and work on completely sovereign open source solutions, without dependence on American technologies,” he said.
These 2025: AI and e-health at the head
Present in these 2025, Jean Baptiste Kempf notes this year a better structuring of the French delegation. “Less presence, but more consistency and quality”. Among the strong trends, the rise of on-board AI, especially in the automobile and e-health. His favorite: a cancer detection marker developed by a Japanese startup.
