Xbox Media Centre, popularly known as XBMC, is undergoing a name change and with the release of version 14, it will be known as Kodi.
The team behind the popular software is change the name to avoid confusion and potentially legal issues that may have cropped up because of it.
“Six years have passed since the Xbox Media Center became XBMC, and simply put, “XBMC” fits less now than it did even in 2008”, notes Nathan Betzen of XBMC in a news release. “The software only barely runs on the original Xbox, and then only because some clever developers are still hacking on that platform. It has never run on the Xbox 360 or Xbox One.”
Betzen went onto note that beyond the media centre functionalities, the software is capable of doing much more than being just a media player – from hosting a range addons to games to streaming content on numerous devices – thereby replacing the platform on which it is hosted.
“XBMC today is far more an Entertainment Center than a simple Media Center”, Betzen adds.
Betzen goes on to details the confusion and legal troubles because of ‘Xbox’ in XBMC ranging from user buying gaming consoles running hacked and broken versions of XBMC to news sites and blogs caught in the confusion.
“What’s more, the Foundation itself and all of its developers have always operated under a potential legal threat from other companies that did have a legal trademark in a similar name. And that legal threat has actually gotten more problematic in recent years”, Betzen adds.
Because of all the confusion and the legal troubles, XBMC Foundation decided to go for one more name change and this is the name it will keep using forever.
Beyond the name change, there is little difference in Kodi as the software will remain the same. The source code will be licensed under GPL 2.0 and the versioning will be based on the current numbering system.
“Our next release will be titled Kodi 14”, Betzen adds.
You can read the complete news release here.
