The XBMC Project Will Now Be Called Kodi

An anonymous reader writes: Citing the problems caused by the lack of legal control over the current name and its long outdated origins as the reasons for the change, The Xbox Media Center team announced that they will switch the project's name to Kodi when version 14 is released later this year. If you're wondering how they picked the name Kodi, here's what they said: "We considered a TON of names. We had a number of requirements for the new name, such as being reasonably pronounceable in various languages and not be a mouthful to say, not be used as a trademark for someone else's media-related product, be easy to remember, etc. The group came up with a list of names and had our lawyer go over them. We then got back a smaller list that had been checked for various legal issues, and then we voted on the final name."

Comments

Like the German discount store Kodi?

[Anonymous Coward]

Good choice, guys.

Re: Like the German discount store Kodi?

[JeffDeptola]

Is that discount chain a media related product? Because if it's not then it meets their criteria.

Re: Like the German discount store Kodi?

[Anonymous Coward]

We'll just call it Lord Smoked Meats and Fishes's Media Center.

Re: Like the German discount store Kodi?

[bill_mcgonigle]

Is that discount chain a media related product? Because if it's not then it meets their criteria.

It might, but that's still silly. If they were based in Germany and came up with "K-Mart" as their name, Americans would mock it. Let's work with people as they actually exist.

Xtreme Broadband Media Center or whatever would have kept the momentum.

Re: Like the German discount store Kodi?

[BronsCon]

Xtreme sounds too much like Xfinity. In fact, Comcast's 105Mbps cable internet offering is named Xtreme. I'm sure they wouldn't care, though.

Re: Like the German discount store Kodi?

[Columcille]

Any name you pick is going to mean something to someone somewhere. Deal with it, pick the best possible name, move on. Kobi works well enough.

Re: Like the German discount store Kodi?

[Anonymous Coward]

Kobi works well enough.

Obviously not well enough since you couldn't even remember the correct name.

Re: Like the German discount store Kodi?

[Anonymous Coward]

To that extent, just about any pronounceable 4 letter combination has been used in some country somewhere, so good luck finding something that does not mean something in some language and is still available in most.

Re: Like the German discount store Kodi?

[Anonymous Coward]

except for Japanese vegetarian

Re: Like the German discount store Kodi?

[NemosomeN]

Stop being an asshole. They aren't even using the name yet, so it's not surprise that people aren't familiar with it yet. Once Godi is released and people are using it, you can try to gauge how memorable the name is.

Re: Like the German discount store Kodi?

[Nemyst]

Doesn't help that the first time you write it, you say "Godi" instead of "Kodi"... So much for memorability, right?

Re: Like the German discount store Kodi?

[Anonymous Coward]

Woosh!

Re: Like the German discount store Kodi?

[Hadlock]

I agree, Jody is a great name, instantly recognizable and difficult to confuse with another name. It's not as ubiquitous as XBMC, nor does it imply the decade-plus heritage, but it'll become memorable over time, I'm sure...

Re: Like the German discount store Kodi?

[Anonymous Coward]

Toby is a stupid name for a cricket.

Re: Like the German discount store Kodi?

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoosh!

Re: Like the German discount store Kodi?

[ganjadude]

your name.... is.... toby!

Re: Like the German discount store Kodi?

[aybiss]

Hahahah laughing at you so hard now it hurts. I for one welcome "Jobi".

This naming trend has to stop

[epyT-R]

Why is it that OSS projects always seem to pick names that are, at best, obscure, and at worst, completely nondescriptive, yet have cutesy sounding names? I think it started somewhere around 2000. Please stop. Pick more functional names so I don't have to explain to people, "no, dolphin is the file manager and konqueror is the browser.'

This also applies to libraries too. For example, anyone know what 'liborc', 'libnettle', 'libenchant', 'libmagic' or 'libcanberra' are without looking it up? I just picked these at random from /usr/lib. There are plenty more.

Stop. Using. Cutesy. Names.

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[Anonymous Coward]

So that's why Microsoft is the Winner. Everything has an obvious name like "Word" and "Office" and "Media Player"

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[Anonymous Coward]

So you basically want every project that does the same thing be named similarly? I see how that would not be confusing at all! I mean, when I want to talk about the media player, I'm talking about the media player, not the media player. Joking aside, you need unique, clearly distinguishable names, not only for better search results, but for trademarking purposes.

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[epyT-R]

Not that simple, but at least the terms are either obvious or intuitive enough for most to make the leap.

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[epyT-R]

Sure beats apps with names that leave you guessing their purpose, esp when exposed on user interfaces. At least xbox media center describes exactly what the project is.

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know those other libraries, but libmagic is for doing things with magic numbers.
Can't get much more descriptive without giving it some ridiculously long name.

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[zAPPzAPP]

"ERROR

Your product name must be at least 8 characters long, contain at least 1 of each of these: upper case letter, lower case letter, number, unprintable symbol, smilie-face, must not have meaning in any language and sound kind of cute."

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[Charliemopps]

This is the post Google age. You have to pick a nonsensical name so it will show up uniquely in a Google search. I'm a musician for example, and the days of naming your band something like "The Doors" is dead. That name would literally kill any chance you had at success in todays world.

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[PRMan]

Dolphin IS a browser. On Android. Which is an OS, not a robot.

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[arielCo]

Zune. Bing. Works. Visio. Vizact.

And lastly, Bob.

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[Guy Harris]

Pick more functional names so I don't have to explain to people, "no, dolphin is the file manager and konqueror is the browser.'

Yeah, "Safari" and "Opera" are such more functional names for a Web browser than "Konqueror".

(And "Windows Explorer" is such a functional name for a file manager; it doesn't at all sound as if somebody tried to give it a name reminiscent of their Web browser.)

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[ihtoit]

Access (obviously a password management tool). Excel (clearly a standardised testing suite). Powerpoint (specialised electrical/electronic interface tool). SQL (who the hell knows what this is?). Outlook (Ah, this is obvious - a weather app).

Janus, Snowball, O'Hare, Memphis, Daytona, Cairo*, Whistler*, Longhorn, Vienna.

*Cairo was the codename for NT4.0 and Whistler the codename for xp, but x and p are the Greek letters chi and rho. Mind blowed yet?

I like the OpenOffice/LibreOffice naming convention for the suite components: Write, Draw, Impress, Base, Calc, Math. I mean, how user friendly do you want it?

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[ihtoit]

ah bollocks, time for the second choice then: The Roof Shingles.

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[Anonymous Coward]

If you pronounce SQL as "squeal" it's much more obvious what it represents.

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[ihtoit]

a FUFMe programming interface?

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[Anonymous Coward]

Zune sounds like "tune". Easy to remember and easy to tell it's for media. Name was discontinued two years ago.
Bing = "Bing Is Not Google". Easy to remember.
Works is very obvious. If you can't tell what it's for by name, then you have brain damage. Product was discontinued seven years ago.
Visio sounds like "vision", as in "having a vision", which is exactly what the software facilitates the development of. Easy.
Vizact hasn't been around in fourteen years.
Bob hasn't been around in nineteen years.

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you name it "Kodi Media Player" or "Kodi Cinema", not just "Kodi", which is completely useless.

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[BronsCon]

All failures. Except, maybe, Visio, though I don't know anyone who actually uses it. I have a friend who own a Zune; he won it, used it once, and it's been holding down the bottom of his sock drawer ever since. You were trying to highlight OP's point, right?

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[2fuf]

Cutesy eh? I like the sound of that. Would give a nice, hip ring to my app for filing tax returns.

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, "Safari" and "Opera" are such more functional names for a Web browser than "Konqueror".

They aren't better names and that is reflected in the fact that nobody uses them. You've just weakened your own argument with that statement.

The number one web browser is still Internet Explorer.

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[Guy Harris]

Yeah, "Safari" and "Opera" are such more functional names for a Web browser than "Konqueror".

They aren't better names

If you seriously think I was suggesting that they were better names, you really need to go get your sarcasm detector re-calibrated.

and that is reflected in the fact that nobody uses them.

Presumably by "nobody uses them" you mean "nobody uses those browsers", and by "nobody uses" you mean "most people don't use".

However, you have not demonstrated that there is any connection between the lower market share for those browsers and their choice of name.

Much of Safari's lower market share may be due to its low market share on Windows, an OS to which it was a latecomer and may never have had a chance to be a contender.

You've just weakened your own argument with that statement.

You've just demonstrated that you don't even understand the argument by everything you've said here.

The number one web browser is still Internet Explorer.

According to NetMarketShare, but not according to StatCounter or W3Counter.

(And the statistics for mobile browsers are a bit different.)

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[Anonymous Coward]

Visual Studio, despite what its name suggests, is not an art or graphic design tool like - for example - Photoshop (which, in turn, is not used for buying or selling pictures)

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[jedidiah]

Microsoft has the benefit of being a market abusing behemoth with a large legal department. They get to play by a different set of rules than the rest of us. That's why Microsoft gets to get away with using trademarks that never should have been allowed.

Smaller organizations actually have to obey the rules.

Re: This naming trend has to stop

[Anonymous Coward]

The temp logo does say Kodi Entertainment Center.

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[Anonymous Coward]

Contradict it, actually. Observe:

So that's why Microsoft is the Winner.

You yourself wrote "All failures".

Everything has an obvious name like "Word" and "Office" and "Media Player"

All of those examples are non-obvious names.

The post he replied to is rated 0 and was probably hidden for you, so I suspect that you missed it and assumed that he was replying to the post above it. Am I right? That would make your own reply make more sense.

Re: This naming trend has to stop

[Anonymous Coward]

KEC! Awesome.

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[arielCo]

Well, to be fair "shop" also means a place where things are crafted or repaired (compare with "workshop"). Visual Studio is visual in its design methodology, but no so much a studio.

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[Anonymous Coward]

It's also a gamecube/wii emulator.

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is it that OSS projects always seem to pick names that are, at best, obscure, and at worst, completely nondescriptive, yet have cutesy sounding names?

Lawyers.. Helllllooo... It's right there in the summary..

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[Anonymous Coward]

Backpedal harder. I called you out, put you in your place and now I'm grinning as I watch you pathetically try to weasel out of your own contradiction.

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[karnal]

I use Visio a fair amount for network diagrams.

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[BronsCon]

Is it cool if I claim to know you? Then, I'll know someone who uses Visio, which will make it the exception that proves the rule :)

Re: This naming trend has to stop

[Anonymous Coward]

And that is perfectly fine. The Slashdot article wasn't clear about that.

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[karnal]

Fine by me!

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[BronsCon]

I moderate; therefore I browse at -1. Word, Office, and yes, sadly, Windows Media Player are very widely used applications; they're the winners in their fields (okay, Media Player may take a back seat to iTunes for iDevice users), which is really painful for me to admit, since I don't use any of them. The products arielCo listed, not so much.

The OP I was referring to was the AC with the 0-rated post. And I, personally, think Office and Media Player are pretty obviously named; Word, slightly less so, but "word processor" is near the top of my list of guesses. Everything in arielCo's post, on the other hand, is an example of a non-obvious name, associated with a failed or failing product, further highlighting the point made by the 0-rated AC post, that products with obvious names are more successful.

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[Anonymous Coward]

Bing = "Bing Is Not Google". Easy to remember.

Well, they got that one right. It is not Google, and it will never be, no matter how hard they're pushing fingers in their ears and how loud they scream "lalalalalalalalala" :)

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[dbraden]

Nice, you now have Karnal knowledge!

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[BronsCon]

If only I could post and moderate in the same thread... +1, bro... +1

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[karnal]

But it was lawful, so... there's that.

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[BronsCon]

Though, if you'd said no, I'd have done it anyway.

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure why Microsoft would ever degrade Bing to being Google. In case you just woke up, Google search, like all Google products, has been getting worse all of the time.

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[maliqua]

applications have had random non function relational names for years, libraries shouldn't i agree but no matter what, this makes more sense than still going with the xbox media center, which works on everything except xbox's these days

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[Anonymous Coward]

Right - I set up a XFCE PC for my cousin's 10 year old daughter, then noticed "Gigolo" on the menu... oops!

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[Desler]

W3Counter? You do realize how dumb the use of that is, right? Most people aren't web developers and as such don't go to that site. We call that biased sampling.

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[Jesus_666]

Nonsensical names are everywhere. Microsoft .NET isn't a network protocol. ActiveX and DirectX have nothing to do with the X Window system, which in turn doesn't use cross-shaped windows. Apple's Lightning connector isn't rated for millions of volts. The Fiat Panda is not an animal and neither is Mozilla Firefox. eBay has nothing to do with an actual bay and Amazon is not even a Brazilian company. SAP doesn't even do anything with trees, much less their sap. The AMD Athlon has nothing to do with sports and the Intel Core-i7 doesn't have sqrt(-1)*7 cores.

Here are some more sensible names. Don't abbreviate them; nobody would understand you.

.net becomes "Microsoft Common Language Infrastructure Application Development Platform".
ActiveX becomes "Microsoft In-Browser Native Code API".
DirectX becomes "Microsoft 32/64-bit Multimedia API".
The X Window System becomes "Graphical Display API for Unixlike Operating Systems".
Lightning becomes "Apple 8-pin Connector Introduced In 2012".
Fiat Panda becomes "Fiat Cheap Car".
Mozilla Firefox becomes "Mozilla Web Browser"; likewise all other web browsers become "[manufacturer name] Web Browser".
eBay becomes "Physical Goods Marketplace Website With Many Auctions".
Amazon becomes "Physical Goods Marketplace Website With Sometimes Free Shipping".
SAP becomes "Big German Expensive Software Company".
Athlon becomes "AMD 32-bit Processor" (or "64-bit Processor").
Intel Core becomes "Intel 64-bit Processor (AMD-derived)". No distinctions between i3, i5 and i7; those don't contribute anything a model number can't.

See? Much better. Now, you might argue that names like "Core" or "Panda" are used to distinguish products from each other and not to inform the user of the exact properties of the product but that kind of sloppy thinking will get you nowhere.

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[TechyImmigrant]

I use Visio. It is excellent.

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[TechyImmigrant]

I use Visio a fair amount for network diagrams.

I use Visio for chip circuit diagrams. The is no comparable tool. In Visio you can make a template with smart shapes that fits right in the document, enforces a consistent grid and the smart shapes can be programmed to do useful shit, like maintain an arrow head shape while the shape is stretched, or clear out the crossing line in an abutting bus tee or scale and position the text so it fits cleanly with the bus, or scales a gate automatically to fit the number of inputs (that land on the grid).

Visio used to be made by Shapeware and it had all these features back then before Microsoft brought them. Microsoft added nothing of use. The smart shapes and libraries shipped with the tool were never useful. But you can make your own libraries that do what you need and that is what makes it a very good tool.

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's not forget "Interface Manager".

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[Anonymous Coward]

+1, carnal... +1

FTFY

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[Guy Harris]

W3Counter? You do realize how dumb the use of that is, right? Most people aren't web developers and as such don't go to that site. We call that biased sampling.

And the same applies to StatCounter, which I also cited?

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[mpe]

Why is it that OSS projects always seem to pick names that are, at best, obscure, and at worst, completely nondescriptive, yet have cutesy sounding names? I think it started somewhere around 2000.

Hardly restricted to OSS, since plenty of proprietary software does the same.
Microsoft Office is also a good example, since "Excel", "PowerPoint" and "Outlook" don't really describe the function at all. Ditto for web browsers, regardless of if they are OSS or proprietary.

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[Anonymous Coward]

StatCounter is even more worthless as they base their stats on page views and not unique visitors. All their stats show is how often people refresh their browsers.

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[bluegutang]

Absolute true, which is why the open source computer algebra project Maxima has a disastrous name. If you want to find out how to calculate something in it (which is often necessary because the documentation is bad), you can't just search for "maxima", you'll get a million unrelated things.

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[Electricity Likes Me]

Why is .NET called that? I would love to know how the hell they came up with that, since it's definitely tricky to Google (do you include or exclude the leading period? Who knows!)

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[dutchwhizzman]

Windows? It should be called "tiles" now and the amount of people that use it any other way than with whatever app they are running in a maximized window is also negligible since they started with the project.

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[Anonymous Coward]

SAP is better known as 'Sandlaufer Anschau Programm' - translated: 'Hourglass watching programm'. No ambiguity here.

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[StripedCow]

Why is it that OSS projects always seem to pick names that are, at best, obscure, and at worst, completely nondescriptive, yet have cutesy sounding names?

Because OSS projects are led by unpaid software engineers, and they don't have a communications/marketing department?

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[zdzichu]

This also applies to libraries too. For example, anyone know what 'liborc', 'libnettle', 'libenchant', 'libmagic' or 'libcanberra' are without looking it up? I just picked these at random from /usr/lib. There are plenty more.

I knew the purpose of 4 out of 5 of those libraries. But I'm the distro developer. Ordinary user has no business in knowing what library does what.

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[TheRaven64]

The number one web browser is still Internet Explorer.

Wikipedia tells a different story. By three of their counters, Chrome has the largest market share (including 'people who visit wikimedia sites like wikipedia', which is probably quite representative), by one counter IE is the largest. Even taking the best number for IE, that still leaves it with under 60% market share. If we assume that all of the Safari users are on OS X (because, let's face it, Safari on Windows sucks beyond belief) then that means that around a third of Windows users have switched to a non-default web browser called either Chrome or Firefox. Given the inertia that prevents most people from switching, these two seem to be doing very well, yet neither Chrome nor Firefox is a name that immediately says 'web browser' to someone unfamiliar with the product (neither even has a logo that would imply it).

If you take the other statistics as being more realistic, then only about 12% of Windows users are still using IE, the rest have switched to something with a less descriptive name.

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[TheRaven64]

ActiveX becomes "Microsoft In-Browser Native Code API".

If you explain it like that, then it's far more confusing. ActiveX is a component architecture - an evolution of COM / OLE. It's used throughout Windows for embedding libraries as plugins in other applications. Pretty much every Windows application uses ActiveX, the web browser is probably among the ones that uses it the least.

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[Anonymous Coward]

SQL (who the hell knows what this is?)

They have bushy tails, hard-to-tell gender and prey on deers.

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[Anonymous Coward]

Worst name evar.

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[Anonymous Coward]

Absolute true, which is why the open source computer algebra project Maxima has a disastrous name. If you want to find out how to calculate something in it (which is often necessary because the documentation is bad), you can't just search for "maxima", you'll get a million unrelated things.

... to say nothing of the venerable statistics platform "R".

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[module0000]

FYI, "Windows Explorer" is much older than "Internet Explorer". The browser was likely named to mimic the file manager, not the other way around.

Re: This naming trend has to stop

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it doesn't. It has nothing to do with Xbox.

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[obarel]

Absolutely! That's why Google named their programming language "Go". They clearly know a thing or two about name searching.

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[Anonymous Coward]

Visio got its name before MS bought the company, so you can't blame MS for this one. Don't worry, there's still lots to blame MS for.

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[Shirley Marquez]

To be fair, SQL isn't an end user tool; it's meant for software developers and system administrators. Those people will be familiar with that rather standard bit of industry jargon. The objection is more valid for the other things on your list.

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[Anonymous Coward]

Smartdraw or even yEd both have their pluses vs Visio

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[AmiMoJo]

At least they didn't go for a "broken keyboard" name like Flikr, or a URL based name featuring the TLD of some unstable island nation.

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[TechyImmigrant]

I went looking but I found nothing to suggest Visio smartsheet type behavior. Do they have that?

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[Anonymous Coward]

and "Excel", "Powerpoint", ...

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[cthulhu11]

This seemed to start when people started devolving to Linux in significant numbers. First time I subjected myself to a Linux desktop I was puzzled by the names. "Bonobo"? Seriously? And then when OpenOffice became OpenOffice.org that was just stupid.

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahh yes, Wikipedia, the epitome of accurate, curated information

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[TheRaven64]

Don't worry, they have an article for that too.

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[macs4all]

I use Visio for chip circuit diagrams. The is no comparable tool.

By "Chip Circuit Diagrams" I assume you mean what is normally called "Schematic Capture", right?

If so, I have always hated the fact that not one CAD/CAE Schematic Capture tool I have personally used has had the "resizing" and other object-editing abilities of even the most ancient of "object-oriented" Drawing apps. Chip symbol from a Library too big for your schematic? In every purpose-specific app I have used, that's just too bad... Many won't even let you rearrange connection nodes to suit your drawing. The list goes on.

I have never seriously looked at using Visio for this (partially since it doesn't have any tie-in to a PCB layout package that I am aware of); but if it allows for reasonable "scaling" of schematic-objects, then I might take another look, thanks for the tip!

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[macs4all]

Windows? It should be called "tiles" now

Or, more appropriately, "Window" (singular), because it sure discourages the user from working in the multiple-overlapping-windows desktop paradigm that was popularized by the Macintosh back in 1984 (and imitated by every other GUI until Windows 8).

And lest we get off on the "Apple ripped-off Xerox" tangent, one of the things that Andy Hertzfeld improved on in the Lisa/Mac Window Manager (part of his QuickDraw Subsystem) over the Xerox PARC interface was the ability to have multiple OVERLAPPING Windows. So regardless of the rest of it, that is one of the things that Apple did above-and-beyond the work at PARC (which they PURCHASED, BTW)...

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[EvilJoker]

.Net was a promotional name applied to many products at the time, much like XP before that.

Part of this was to align the current versions, and part of it was to emphasize the network capabilities being introduced. This all happened ~2002, and that was a very big thing (from a marketing perspective) at the time.

This post seems to think the main reason was the latter.
Partial list of .NET product names

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[Anonymous Coward]

libmagic is obvious: it does filetype identification through magic numbers (and other heuristics, but magic numbers at the start of the file is the big one).

Work

[Anonymous Coward]

Most important piece from the story,
Now I have to rename my media server from XBMC-PC...

Redefine

[zAPPzAPP]

Couldn't they have just redefined the acronym?

'Xenon Based Media Center'.. something something... It does not have to make sense. Just shorten it back to XBMC. There. No more trademark violation.

We don't even know what the X in xbox stands for either. No one cares.

Re:Redefine

[Anonymous Coward]

We don't even know what the X in xbox stands for either. No one cares.

Yes we do, the name was derived from a contraction of DirectX Box.

Re:Redefine

[zAPPzAPP]

Which does not answer the question what the X stands for either, now does it?

Re:Redefine

[Anonymous Coward]

X is placeholder for 3D, Draw, Sound, Music in Direct3D, DirectDraw, DirectSound, DirectMusic.

Re:Redefine

[westlake]

Couldn't they have just redefined the acronym? 'Xenon Based Media Center'.. something something...

It's too late in the day for such a simple-minded solution to take hold.

A Google search for "X Box Media Center" returns 426 million hits. "XBMC" 4 million hits.

Re:Redefine

[Anonymous Coward]

"X Box Media Center" with quotes = 496,000 results

Re:Redefine

[danknight48]

Couldn't they have just redefined the acronym?

'Xenon Based Media Center'.. something something... It does not have to make sense. Just shorten it back to XBMC. There. No more trademark violation.

We don't even know what the X in xbox stands for either. No one cares.

^^ This.
The new name has nothing to do with XBMC or what it stands for. They may of well as called it Cloud, oh hail the buzz word that means fuck all and everything thats networked, at the same time.

Kodi seems like a bit of a joke when the char Name[0] went +1;

Xtra Bananas Monkies Claim

Re:Redefine

[TBoon]

Or if they "need" a name-change for whatever reason, why not XMBC (eXtendable Media Based Center)?.

I've found myself accidentally calling it that already because it is easier to say, and no messing around with meaningless "shiny" names like pointed out elsewhere.

Re:Redefine

[Sertis]

In the spirit of GNU, they should just make it Xbmc Based Media Center

Re:Redefine

[Geeky]

Or perhaps someone got involved in the project who'd had some experience with BMC software, and he said "guys, change the name, you don't want to get confused with that archaic steaming pile of bloatware"

Re: Redefine

[Anonymous Coward]

So what does the X in DirectX stand for? :)

Re:Redefine

[Anonymous Coward]

You are right, the proof is right here : http://trademark.markify.com/trademarks/ctm/xbmc/010473601

They must have signed a non-disclosure agreement, because they are pretty careful about not mentioning BMC.

Re:Redefine

[jon3k]

or at least call it Kodi Media Center so people know wtf it is.

Re:Redefine

[servant]

Re-defining the acronym doesn't seem to be the ways corporate life allows things to work. Just like EMC2 renamed to LinuxCNC after being the US Govt project named Enhanced Machine Controller Project, eventually it became independent of the US Govt and changed its name to EMC2. But EMC Corporation became jealous and even though EMC project proceeded EMC Corporation (from what I can tell) managed to force the name change (without compensation).

So life goes. Just try to figure it out.

Re:Redefine

[Anonymous Coward]

So true...

Re:Redefine

[EvilJoker]

That assumes that keeping the name XBMC was their goal. I'm not sure that it was.

I actually had ignored XBMC for years, believing that it's purpose was to create a media client for Xbox devices. It was not until this post that I realized it was something else entirely, and that I'm actually interested in it.

(If I can figure out how to set up caching properly, I will be using it exclusively on my media box)

sounds like an outpost planet

[turkeydance]

i blame Exxon, they started it. Esso was so sublime.

Re:sounds like an outpost planet

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember when they did this. It was the first time I was aware of that a computer was used in the naming process. IIRC they had an algorithm that generated inoffensive names that did not violate trademarks, that would have high recognition value, and had some sort of similarity to the original name. The computer went through 100s of thousands of names, came up with 100 or so that might work, Exxon was chosen from that group. I immediately thought it was just the sort of unaesthetic name a computer would come up with. It was offensive to me in its complete lack of personality. I still don't like it.

Re:sounds like an outpost planet

[Anonymous Coward]

Should have been named Essoel.

Re:sounds like an outpost planet

[Anonymous Coward]

I was thinking that it was slightly later (say '68 or so) than 1965 that Cities Service did pretty much what you're talking about (I'm almost certain I read about it in a Time magazine article) and came up with CITGO, and I was thinking that it was earlier than 1972/1973 that Esso changed to Exxon, but that's the date given for CITGO by CITGO and other sources and those are the dates (apparently announced in '72, went into effect January 1st, 1973) given by multiple sources online as well.

unitron posting AC to avoid undoing mods, but I remembered the CITGO story so strongly (except for the year) that I couldn't restrain myself.

captcha is "unveil", co-incidentally enough.

Dogshit name

[Anonymous Coward]

Kodi? What a dog shit name. I won't run that.
Why not just stick with XBMC and say it no longer stands for anything?
-donkey

I renamed mine "Chromecast"

[Anonymous Coward]

plus NAS plus DLNA plus Android phone plus Localcast. Works like a treat, the entire family is thrilled.

XBMC couldn't even get the mouse cursor to work (I bought a wireless keyboard/accel-mouse for it) without closing the bug "get a better GPU".

Wish the Open Source solution could have been what the family room needed.

Re:I renamed mine "Chromecast"

[CRCulver]

XBMC couldn't even get the mouse cursor to work (I bought a wireless keyboard/accel-mouse for it) without closing the bug "get a better GPU".

What in the word do you need a mouse for in XBMC? It is meant to be controlled with a television remote control, a smartphone app, or a web browser on another device. You don't even need the keyboard except when XBMC's scraper requires manual intervention.

Re:I renamed mine "Chromecast"

[Anonymous Coward]

Weird, what issue were you having?

Looooong time XBMC user here (since back when it was Xbox Media Player), and I've never seen an issue with cursors across manifold hardware.

Not saying it didn't happen, just curious how it occurred.

Re:I renamed mine "Chromecast"

[Anonymous Coward]

Kind of hard to search for movie/music/picture/YouTube video titles and play games with only a TV remote. You do know that XMBC is capable of much more than simply viewing movies in sequential order, right?

Kodi means flag in Tamil.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

There was this long discussion in that site about the meaning of Kodi and whether or not it is suitable for this package. Kodi means flag, (the flappy thing that flutters from a flagpole flag, not flag meaning getting tired). That is if you say kodi like you say "midi" in the midi-skirt. If you say it more like ko-die it would mean an umbrella or a donation. I don't know much else about the software.

Re:Kodi means flag in Tamil.

[Anonymous Coward]

It mean a hen in Telugu, usually the female one.

Re:Kodi means flag in Tamil.

[Anonymous Coward]

Flag, umbrella and donation sounds like fine associations to an open source project like the one formerly know as the xbmc

X Square Circle

[tepples]

Xbox 360 == X Square Circle. Can't be unseen.

Re:X Square Circle

[EvilJoker]

I believe this is an example of Poe's Law. If I weren't familiar with the Uncyclopedia, I probably would've started repeating it as fact.

Obligatory Dilbert

[linebackn]

Obligatory Dilbert: http://dilbert.com/strips/comi...

What a judge will accept

[tepples]

Kodi? What a dog shit name.

Bear, not dog.

Why not just stick with XBMC and say it no longer stands for anything?

A judge might not buy that excuse.

Re:What a judge will accept

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not just stick with XBMC and say it no longer stands for anything?

A judge might not buy that excuse.

On what grounds? It is their name and in that form it violates no law. The artist formerly knows as "X Box Media Centre". Now represented by a meaningless "love symbol" that has no pronunciation, but people read as "Prince" anyway.

Re:What a judge will accept

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh the grounds that a company called BMC Software threatened XBMC over just the letters. It had nothing to do with xbox.

My names

[future assassin]

Awesome Media Center
Xenu's Base Media Center
Awesome Like Beer Media Center

Re:My names

[Anonymous Coward]

We already have an Awesome WM, and it's horrible to google it.

While they are getting rid of bad legacy things...

[digitaltraveller]

Drop the requirement for the 3D graphics card, since it's NEVER EVER used for anything remotely 3D graphics related.
Don't get me wrong, it's a great way for someone who doesn't know any better to run their CPU at 110% using software emulation, but otherwise a bad decision for their target market.

Re:Why shouldn't something for the XBox...

[BronsCon]

Because it hasn't been for the XBox for quite some time now.

What's in a name?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't really care what they call it, still will continue using it as it's a pretty decent media centre front-end. Quite like openelec as well.

Vizio

[tepples]

Visio sounds like "vision", as in "having a vision", which is exactly what the software facilitates the development of. Easy.

To me, Vizio means "TVs and computer monitors", like the VX32L TV that I'm using as a second monitor for my laptop as I type this very comment. And Vizio makes smart TVs, whose firmware would compete with what is now called Kodi.

Re:Vizio

[Anonymous Coward]

I am tempted to spend some mod points, to that the brainless editors of ./ who have not seem any brand outside that is thrown down the basement stairs, of course they never heard of Vizio

Re:Vizio

[TechyImmigrant]

To me Vizio means low-grade, crap TV that all of the sports bars use because they are cheap.

Visio on the other hand means a flowchart planner.

Odd that. I though Visio was the only drawing package with both decent scriptable shapes and a half decent UI.
It is the only thing in the Microsoft suite that gives me a reason to use Windows. All other things (coding, designing chips, simulating, serving internet things, writing documents) I can use Linux based tools more effectively.

You could plan flowcharts in it, but that wouldn't achieve anything useful.

Re:Vizio

[Blakey Rat]

You do realize that the software product Visio predates the TV brand by a solid decade, right?

Re:Vizio

[TheRaven64]

Visio, at least, is not a name that you can blame Microsoft for. It was named by Shapeware in 1992, Microsoft kept the name for the brand recognition when they bought it in 2000. And that's rather the original point: It doesn't matter that the name is stupid, it is a name that people have heard of. Lots of people have heard of XBMC and don't really know what it stands for, just that it's a media centre thing. Just go the LLVM or SRI route and keep the names, just remove the thing that they stand for. Rename the project from XBox Media Center to XBMC.

Re:Vizio

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, you have not idea what you're talking about. But hey, that's someone else's fault also?

Re:Vizio

[klashn]

You do also realize that Microsoft bought the company that made Visio and made it into an Office product.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V...

Re:Vizio

[TechyImmigrant]

I'm fully aware of that. I used Visio before Microsoft brought Shapeware/Visio corp.

Structured Query Language

[tepples]

SQL (who the hell knows what this is?).

SQL is Structured Query Language, an ISO standard since the 1980s. "Microsoft SQL Server" is as generic after the first word as "Windows Media Player". Other well-known products implementing subsets of the same standard have names like "SQLite", "MySQL", "PostgreSQL", and "ORACLE Database" (allegedly standing for "One Rich Aristocrat Called Larry Ellison").

Janus, Snowball, O'Hare, Memphis, Daytona, Cairo*, Whistler*, Longhorn, Vienna.

Codenames like these were not intended for use by the general public. For example, Whistler was renamed to "Windows XP" and Longhorn to "Windows Vista" before the release candidate stage.

Re:Structured Query Language

[Anonymous Coward]

"Microsoft SQL Server" is as generic after the first word

I've worked with dozens and dozens of database people for 15+ years and have never once heard any of them say "SQL Server" as a generic name for a SQL database.

Re:Structured Query Language

[tepples]

If you never hear of a "MySQL server" or a "PostgreSQL server", you must work in a Microsoft shop.

Re:Structured Query Language

[Anonymous Coward]

Those products do not include the word "server" in their original names.

or "Ouya"

[dltaylor]

I've got an Ouya, specifically to run XBMC. Runs pretty well with both the controller and a keyboard+mouse, except that the mouse speed is a bit high. Yes, it could use GigE and USB3.0, but running from the NAS it's fast enough and upscales what I've used, so far, in real time. Haven't found a good Linux Blu-Ray-to-stream converter, so no testing with those.

What were the Other Options?

[wisnoskij]

"Giant Douche" and "Turd Sandwich"?

Re:Why shouldn't something for the XBox...

[rpresser]

If you cared to actually read the rest of the fucking article, you'd realize that it's been several years since the software was even COMPILABLE for the original Xbox. Idiot.

Re:While they are getting rid of bad legacy things

[binarylarry]

Pretty much every user interface technology built in the past 7-8 years requires a hardware graphics card.

My Recommendations for an Acronym

[houindcon]

- Xcellent Basic Media Center
- Xstensible Brilliant Media Center
- X11 Bitchin' Media Center
- posiX, But others too, Media Center
- Xquisite Basic Media Center
- Xpert Basic Media Center
- Xpertly Built
- Xquisitely Built...

I could go on... I'm with the others here that say they should have just kept the damn acronym. It's bad enough that we have to keep track of name changes that occur when projects change leaders or get forked. Businesses often stick with dumb names because it's better for their reputation. I feel like it would have been easy to keep the acronym. I'm disappointed. I think it sucks that I have to call it Kodi now. XBMC sounds cool to me like XMMS. I dunno.. I'm old :(

Re:My Recommendations for an Acronym

[Anonymous Coward]

Xtremely Bodacious Man Cave

Re:Why shouldn't something for the XBox...

[Anonymous Coward]

I feel sorry for your mental handicaps :(

Kodi makes sense..

[Anonymous Coward]

Since they'll never listen to users screaming for them to Kodi in some better buffering.

Re:Why shouldn't something for the XBox...

[Desler]

You'd be wrong.

It's your party, cry if you want to.

[Lord Kano]

but come on. Why do people keep fucking with the branding that we know and love?

Stop trying to get the prom queen to like you and stick with your day-one friends.

LK

New domain

[Pouic]

Will be kodi.tv it seems.

Re:New domain

[Mirar]

That explains why kodi.com, kodi.net nor kodi.org didn't work.

Re:New domain

[Pouic]

Whois on http://kodi.tv/:

# 2014-08-03 15:37:45 CEST

domain: kodi.tv
reg_created: 2014-05-29 19:59:29
expires: 2015-05-29 19:59:29
created: 2014-05-29 21:59:29
changed: 2014-08-02 18:00:42
transfer-prohibited: yes
ns0: a.dns.gandi.net
ns1: b.dns.gandi.net
ns2: c.dns.gandi.net
owner-c:
nic-hdl: CF3454-GANDI
owner-name: XBMC Foundation
organisation: XBMC Foundation
person: Team XBMC
address: '340 S LEMON AVE #7222'
zipcode: 91789
city: WALNUT
state: California
country: United States of America
lastupdated: 2014-05-31 12:39:05

Re:While they are getting rid of bad legacy things

[TechyImmigrant]

Except the ones explicitly designed not to need such fripperies.

Re:Why shouldn't something for the XBox...

[Seq]

According to the xbmc4xbox wiki, it's a fork of xbmc as mainline support for the xbox was removed.

XBMC4Xbox is a third-party developer spin-off project of XBMC for Xbox, with still active development and support of the Xbox. This project was created as a fork of XBMC for Xbox as a separate project to continue having a version of XBMC for the Xbox hardware platform, and was initially started by a few members from the original XBMC project in order to fully breakout the removed Xbox branch support from the official XBMC project and let it continue as a totally separate project, which was announced on the 27 of May 2010.

a *TON* of names ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, even after that fucking *TON* of names they didn't bother to run a simple database check on existing business names

Like Kodi Smit-McPhee?

[Anonymous Coward]

I knew I'm not his only fan over 12!

Re:Why shouldn't something for the XBox...

[Anonymous Coward]

Reading is hard!

Re:While they are getting rid of bad legacy things

[jones_supa]

All the cool ones need a graphics card.

Re:While they are getting rid of bad legacy things

[TechyImmigrant]

I suspect we have differing interpretations of what is cool.

Will Debian use the Kodi name?

[Anonymous Coward]

Form the article: "The XBMC Foundation has elected to wholesale adopt the policies of the Mozilla Foundation with regards to distribution and trademark licensing."

I suppose that means that the Kodi trademark and related artworks will conflict with the Debian Free Software Guidleines in the same way as the Mozilla products, which resulted in IceWeasel and other name changes.

Re:Will Debian use the Kodi name?

[deek]

That depends on whether the XBMC foundation are dicks and prevent Debian from applying security patches to the Debian packaged version of Kodi.

This naming trend has to stop

[Anonymous Coward]

Welcome to the 'Nix world. We are not boring over here so we can name things as we wish.

No Branding talent

[dcp2alpha]

Love XBMC Hate Kodi

Kodi??

[MoarSauce123]

That is the name of a chain of junk stores in Germany...not flattering for that neck of the woods.

well, crap

[Anonymous Coward]

this is going to make the 'XBMC' tattoo I got last month quite difficult to explain to people

This naming trend has to stop

[Anonymous Coward]

'libcanberra' sounds like it was named after the capital city of Australia. As someone who's spent their life living in Canberra I can tell you that there's nothing "cutesy" about this place.

XMC

[Anonymous Coward]

I vote for XMC.. enough said.