The problem is that this license doesn't allow distributors, like Apple, to limit users rights...

Right, but you chose to use it for your project.

It's a shame one of your developers is being nasty about it, but ultimately it's a problem you guys brought on yourself. If you hadn't put a license on your thing, your thing wouldn't have any license conflicts.

In other words, I suspect that next time you start an open source project, you'll pick a different license for it (or simply not use one).

Code without a license cannot be used for any purpose, because you have no rights to other people's code unless they grant them.

Anyway, VLC is useless without FFmpeg, which will always be at least LGPL.

Having no license means that you have no guarantee that the copyright owner will not change his mind and sue you in the future for using or distributing his software, licenses are a boring part but necessary.

If there's no license there are no rights for the user – they'll basically not be allowed to do anything with the code (or their lawyers can reasonably tell them to stay off it).

My preferred license for "please do whatever you want with the software" is the MIT/X11 license.

Well, truth be told, I am fighting hard to move VLC to LGPL :D

And I didn't start VLC...