alt Hacker NewsVB could bang on any Win32 C API, so there's no reason to disbelieve this. In the modern sense it's like saying you couldn't write this in Go. Direct question: do you know what you are talking about, or are you just spewing keywords and reddit mime dancing?
So did Perl with bindings and TCL interoperating in two ways. Reddit? I used to compile mplayer and libdvdcss long ago, and even if the prior version was VB/C++ bound, it was the open code (FLOSS) the one who survived every takedown attempt.
The same with Nagra encoding and XawTV for some propietary channels in TV. You can decode any stream (and even extract subtitles) thanks to free software.
Even BTTV cards will still work. Go try that with Windows 7 and up. If you can find drivers, that's it. And working decoding software not messing up with DDraw based codecs and rendering.
I was there, and it was the free software the one who broke most of the chains. Propietary software today it's useless.