I absolutely love VideoLAN's stance regarding patents

Programs are mathematical proofs. If maths cannot be patented, software can't be, either.

Proofs can be represented as programs, not the other way around. Also, USA allows for algorithm parents, and algorithms are maths. While I agree with you, your reasoning is not correct.
- No, the proof - program correspondence is in both directions.
Judges and Justices are not that precise. They aim to preserved public order before anything else. If a whole industry is based on a questionable interpretation of patent, they is a lot of chances that judges would agree on it. Even in countries where you could not patent algorythm, industries patent the documentation, the "software design", the brand name, the illustrations used, and aggregates everything together, to say they own it. And it works.

TL;DR : Class Justice
There are ways to patent maths

You can hear a more detailed explanation on VLC's stance from the man himself (JB Kempf) in the FOSS pod S1E11 episode around 22:10.

Basically:

Not that many threats become lawsuits
Patent trolling is countered with publicly accessible prior art
Having no money is also a good deterrent

Thanks for the heads up about FOSS pod. Had not heard of it before.

This is all well and good, and where’s the Traffic Cone!?!

Under Santa's hat
Asking the real questions here.
The cone is the logo for their most popular project (VLC media player), but this is a message from the organization as a whole, which has the logo you currently see. It is not specifically about that one project.

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What are these "other country" things you mention? You mean the place where war happens and immigrants come from? I didn't know they had computers there.
- Can confirm, here in Norway there's both civil and uncivil war at the moment. The uncivil part is against sweden. The country ran out of hamburgers last week, and the hamburger mines have been sabotaged. The only productive diplomatic channel with sweden has been utilized to agree on forming a donkey-caravan across the atlantic ocean into Mexico where humanitarian efforts will provide us with sombreros and crime for our trip north towards the US border. I am posting this from the last steam powered telefax which still has enough coal to run. Wish me luck.
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- They're probably talking about Puerto Rico.
Please be sarcasm... Please be sarcasm... Oh I pray to the dark void of the universe that this is sarcasm.
- it absolutely is, take it from an autistic person.
  
  (autstic people often don't recognize or can't properly replicate sarcasm, which is why i often use /s)
While the mistake is a common one, all countries have actually agreed to jointly follow bird law in these sorts of matters.

Can someone elaborate?

They don't recognize or value software patents because they aren't recognized by the government where the project is run from.
- Vive la France!
- Valid.
French laws don't recognize software patents so videolan doesn't either. This is likely a reference to vlc supporting h265 playback without verifying a license. These days most opensource software pretends that the h265 patents and licensing fees don't exist for convenience. I believe libavcodec is distributed with support enabled by default.

Nearly every device with hardware accelerated h265 support has already had the license paid for, so there's not much point in enforcing it. Only large companies like Microsoft and Red Hat bother.
- They bother because they are US based and can be hounded by the patent ~~trolls~~ holders
America has the odd idea that software is considered patentable. Since the developers of VLC are French, and software isn't considered patentable in France, they're saying "Va te faire enculer" to people who want to sue them.
- Why is it odd to be able to patent software specifically? I don't see how it's different from medicine or anything physical. To clarify, I'm not arguing the merits of patents in general, just asking why software is different.

AFAIK european laws only allow to patent "inventions". Software is considered to be a series of "words" in whatever programming language you're using and, like sentences, it's not an invention and can't be patented.

On the other hand, software-assisted inventions can be patented as a whole.

With that said, software can still be considered a "work" protected by copyright laws.

And that's fine. VLC does their own implementation of codecs so that's not an issue. It's the patents that make it an issue.

That logo design hurts my heart.. https://cdn.cnc-comm.com/theme//assets/images/wslogo.png

Fuck that, I like that it's different. I feel a lot of the logos are too similar and boring.

This one has the retro feel to it.
- I don't think they were complaining about the design. It invoked a memory of a beloved video game studio from the past that had a similar logo (Westwood Studios) and they are a bit heartbroken. I didn't take their comment as an actual complaint against VideoLAN's logo.
graphic design is my passion

That’s not their stance, that’s French law

I think it both. Not all software or codec provider aim to apply the EU and French laws. Quite the contrary

Utterly based.