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An anonymous reader writes: Citing the problems caused by the lack of legal control over the current name and its long outdated origins as the reasons for the change, The Xbox Media Center team announced that they will switch the project's name to Kodi when version 14 is released later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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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...

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

[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

[ihtoit]

a FUFMe programming interface?

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]

The temp logo does say Kodi Entertainment Center.

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

[karnal]

Fine by me!

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[dbraden]

Nice, you now have Karnal knowledge!

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.

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]

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

Re:Redefine

[Sertis]

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

sounds like an outpost planet

[turkeydance]

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

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

[BronsCon]

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

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

[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: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: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.

Re:My Recommendations for an Acronym

[Anonymous Coward]

Xtremely Bodacious Man Cave

well, crap

[Anonymous Coward]

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