MistServer is built by the OptiMist team
We are a collective of video engineers who never stopped shipping. MistServer began as a project to fix broken infrastructure. Today it powers streaming experiences across the globe, still owned and operated by the people who originally created it.
Values
The principles we operate on
Employee-owned & independent
No external investors or debt. Our roadmap is guided by customers and engineers, not boardroom pressure.
Engineer-first conversations
Talk directly to the team that designs, builds, and operates MistServer. No sales scripts, no gatekeepers.
Media veterans since 2009
We were integrators before we became product builders. Our network spans broadcasters, OTT services, and AV engineers worldwide.
Origins
MistServer is maintained and supported by OptiMist Video B.V.; the small engineering team that originally conceived it and still keeps it updated.
The team has its roots in 2009, back then known as DDVTech. A media-related project had just failed due to issues with the media server software that was used, and during the post-mortem somebody asked “Well, could we have done any better ourselves?”. Soon after, MistServer was born. Fast forward a few years, and MistServer has become our core business.
Over the years, DDVTech has grown organically. Never taking on more work than we were confident we could handle ensured our reputation for excellent customer service and a personal approach. You’ll never get stuck talking to a call center with us, nor will you have to deal with sales departments: all support for our software is directly by the people that wrote it. Each and every one of our engineers considers MistServer a matter of personal pride. As a result, all feedback from our users is taken seriously and we always aim for the “correct” solution as opposed to the “quick and dirty”.
Eventually, the original investor that funded our early years wanted to retire, and sold DDVTech to Livepeer, an american video services company. They've since pivoted in a different direction, but gratuitously offered to sell back DDVTech to MistServer's lead engineer for a small token amount. At that point, the team collectively decided to become a co-op, and each team member became equal part-owner of our newly founded parent company: OptiMist Video B.V.
Timeline
Milestones that shaped MistServer
2009
MistServer project begins
MistServer is born after a failed livestreaming website project
2011
Team expansion
We grow to 3 full-time engineers and several part-time engineers + support staff
2012
MistServer 1.0 release
After 3 years of development MistServer is now deemed stable for general production use
2014
MistServer rewritten as 2.0
MistServer was rewritten to use shared memory as its main Inter-Process-Communication mechanism
2016
The Meta-Player is released
The player component we use for previews in the admin interface is so well-liked that we turn it into a full-featured playback solution
2017
Non-commercial licenses available
Besides the Open Source edition and the Pro edition, there is now also a non-commercial edition - which is the Pro edition but prohibited from commercial use
2021
Livepeer acquires MistServer project
Livepeer acquires the MistServer project after using it for several years as the backbone of their platform
2022
MistServer 3.0 + Public Domain
MistServer gets its second major rewrite, to a new lock-less memory model. It's also relicensed as public domain, and the "Pro" edition discontinued.
2023
MistServer team becomes fully independent
Livepeer pivots to the AI market, and hands the MistServer property back to its engineering team.
2025
FrameWorks Network MVP
Managed hosting and orchestration ships for teams that want us to operate MistServer, billing, and automation for them.
Team
Meet the engineers behind MistServer
Jaron Viëtor
Team Lead
Author of the first version of MistServer. Designs the core, ships the hard patches and keeps every release rock-solid.
Balder Viëtor
QA & Customer Success Lead
Stress-tests every workflow, keeps enterprise rollouts on track, and is usually the first person customers talk to.
Carina Keizer-van der Meer
Interface Engineer & Operations Lead
Owns the management UI, player experience, and the operational tooling that keeps the business humming.
Ramkoemar Bhoera
Core & Embedded Systems Engineer
Extends MistServer deep into embedded deployments, keeping low-level integrations performant and resilient.
Marco van Dijk
Core & Solutions Engineer
Bridges core media work with UI, hosted solutions and business development to keep the roadmap on track.
Juno Jense
Core & Security Engineer
Keeps MistServer relevant with new features, future-proof security standards, and a modern design philosophy.
Funding
Supported & funded by
Funded by the European Union. This project is funded through the NGI0 Commons Fund, a fund established by NLnet (nlnet.nl/commonsfund) with financial support from the European Commission's Next Generation Internet programme, under the aegis of DG Communications Networks, Content and Technology under grant agreement No 101135429. Additional funding is made available by the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI).
Read more on our NLnet project pageWork with the OptiMist team
We collaborate with customers, agencies, and integrators worldwide. Bring us the hard problems, from stream ingest, to pipeline orchestration, to QoE analysis, and we will tackle them together.